I have stayed and visited several rain forests and I have found them all exciting and delightful. Our accommodations have always been great, but the Daintree facilities were especially nice.
It was a
two-hour ride (160 K) from Cairns to Coconut Beach Rainforest Resort, our hotel
at Cape Tribulation in the Daintree Rainforest. We drove onto a small cable
ferry to get across the Daintree River. The road after crossing was narrow and
winding. It seemed like a long ride as the last hour or so was in the rain.
It was
still raining quite hard so the hotel supplied us with large umbrellas and
guides escorted us to our cabins. The first part of the facility opened in 1989.
Our large cabin had a gorgeous wooden floor and was lovely, but it was morning
before we could see where we were situated. During the night we listened to
lots of nature noises. It was great! Waking in the morning, I was quiet so not
to waken my travel partner. While I sat
with a cup of coffee in our sitting area I looked out into a forest of greenery
and could see nothing but lush foliage! It was beautiful, quiet and peaceful!
The impressive facility also has a 40-unit
villa, large reception area, long house, pool, bar, in-house accommodations for
70 staff, and an education and adventure lodge. There is also a private beach. Because of
its rainforest location, great care had been taken to design the resort to
blend into its surroundings, and to be ecologically sensitive to the World
Heritage Area. Covering 250 acres, it was designed to have minimal impact on
the local flora and fauna. The cabins
were built on high set poles, requiring minimal removal of trees. The use of
boardwalks minimized the impact of pedestrian traffic, preventing damage to the
forest floor. The facility has its own water supply and generates all its electricity. It truly was a fabulous place, somewhere I
would love to return to!
Capt. Cook named the area Cape
Tribulation after his ship ran aground on Endeavor Reef. The rain forest, only
10-20 degrees south of the equator, was named in 1832 after Richard Daintree, an explorer
and businessman. It is all wilderness area, covering 100 hectares, and is 130
million years old. The Daintree National Park, established in 1979, was
designated a World Heritage Site in 1988.
The area protects 70 species of animals
and over 200 bird species including the cassowary, plus many flowers and
plants. It is the only place in the world where two World Heritage Sites
meet---the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef. The Daintree Rainforest is a coastal rainforest and runs in pockets for
450 kilometers. It is an upland rainforest and is the largest rainforest in the
Heritage complex. Thirteen of the 19 flowering plants are found only here, and
60% of Australia’s bat species live in this rainforest. There are no monkeys in
the country.
One afternoon a biologist took us on a
nature walk to identify much of the flora and was most interesting. She was
very animated and it was obvious she loved her job.
Another day we took a catamaran several miles
to snorkel the Great Barrier Reef. The snorkeling was much better, the reef more
alive and interesting here than when I went off from Green Island, a much more popular
and busy tourist attraction. Five years earlier Green Island with its tourist mentality
had been a big disappointment.
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