Daintree Rainforest, Australia

Thursday, March 29

Today we went on a rainforest tour. We were in the Daintree National Rainforest. While we were on the tour we cruised through a crocodile infested river, went on a rainforest walk, fed and played with kangaroos and wallabies, went swimming in a river, tasted tropical fruits, and walked on a beach.

To begin with, we started our day by loading a boat and cruising into the Daintree river (North of Cairns, Austrailia). We saw a total of 8 crocodiles! One of the crocodiles we learned about was named Nelson. Nelson had lost one of his arms while he was fighting another crocodile. Now if one of us lost an arm we would be dead if we didn't get stitched up or didn't cover up quickly enough, but with crocodiles it is different. They have a special reflex that clots or is natural tourniquet and stops the blood from flowing all the way out there arm and making them loose so much blood.

Today we also went on a forest walk. Austrailia has 16/22 of the plants that are recognized as being prehistoric and we got to see many of them.
One of the plants we talked about was called the Lawyer's Vine. This is a vine that comes out of certain palm trees. This plant has hooks on either side of it that help it hook onto other plants to make it get closer to the sunlight. Our tour guide told us a story about him and his friend. Him and his friend were riding there motor bikes in the rainforest and he was infront and suddenly his friends bike shoots past him, without his friend. Turns out that the vine is so strong that it ripped his friend off his bike!

The third thing I will tell you about is when we went swimming in the river. Now you would think that usually there would be crocodiles in a clear river in the trees, but there weren't. We learned that crocs don't live there because the water isn't mucky, it is clear. They hate when the water is clear because it means that the thing they want to catch and eat can see them coming and get away. They like the water to be muddy so they can sneak up on them.

Lastly, we tasted several tropical fruits. We tried Bannana, Mango, Dragonfuit, Pineapple, Poor man's avocado, Longan fruit and Papaya.
The fruits tasted different than how you would think though. To start with, the mango, it tasted different than the mangos we are used to because it was picked at a different time. Our mangos are picked green and shipped to Washington state to ripen and be ready to eat. In Australia, they pick ripe and ready then cut it up and eat it right away.
Next the banana, it was different because it had darker, larger seeds in it. This was just a natural difference in the fruit.

The thing I took away from today is that the Rainforest is a Beautiful place and everybody should get a chance to explore it and it's animals, plants, and hikes.

-Marin-
















http://www.skyrail.com.au/news/skyrail-news/421-vexing-vines
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daintree_Rainforest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassowary

Location:Daintree Rainforest, Australia