Iter Facere

We see the elusive Cassowary

Saturday, July 15
Cape Tribulation 4:30 PM

Breakfast is an easy buffet. We wander over to the reception to look for things for tomorrow. We finally decide on another rain forest walk at 2:00. It will be a nice, late morning. Just before the guide shows up, I realize that we can go swimming on this tour. Gad. We rush back to the room to change and race back. We’re still early. Kylie our guide shows up with the van. There will be only two other people on our trip, a couple from Switzerland. They will leave after lunch, so then it will just be the two of us and the guide. That worked out well.
Our first stop is at a botanical walkway through the the forest. It is really dark in the rain forest, which is the first thing we noticed. Kylie pointed out that that is why there is nothing on the ground under the forest...no light reaches down so nothing grows at ground level. There are some little saplings growing which she says are twenty years old. Since they get no light they are just grow very slowly, waiting for something to make a tree fall down and open up the canopy. Once that happens the plants will rapidly increase in height trying to get to the light. You can’t calculate age by tree rings in the rain forest. What the rings show is the number of growth cycles, which could be years for one ring if the plant is shaded for a long time. The other odd thing is that the soil is so water logged that the tree brings it’s roots to the surface in buttresses in order to get air. It will also drop roots out from higher in the trunk for the same purpose. Vines are everywhere, clinging to other plants for support. Also clinging to the trees are epiphytes, like bird’s nest ferns and orchids, which live on the trees, but don’t root in the ground. They cling to the side ofthe tree and root in the debris that catches in the spot they root at. Eventually the rain forest gave way to a mangrove swamp, where the tide came in and inundated the land. Mangroves are pretty cool. Their roots elevate up off of the ground to get air also.

After wandering around the mangrove swamp, and a quick break for coffee and muffins we get on a boat looking for saltwater crocodiles. Estuarine crocodiles get up to 25 feet long and eat anything, including people. When we checked in last night, the desk clerk showed us some walks nearby and pointed out where some crocodiles were known to be. His exact phrase was, “Don’t swim there if you like living”. I won’t doubt his advice. We head up the creek (more like a river) for about fifteen minutes and see a lot of mangroves, some neat birds, a heron and then suddenly a crocodile swimming towards us.

A little further down the river there are two more, a female on the bank at a large male in the water. He swims off while the female stays up on the bank. We watch for awhile and then head back

The Swiss couple leaves us at this point and we drive down the road for lunch. The lunch spot is actually private property, with a beautiful stream and water cascade. We could swim, but the water is cold and neither of us is that enthused. We are eating lunch when Kylie looks up and says “Snakes”. Above us, on the canopy are the shadows of three tree snakes, taking the sun. Yuck. We take a photo to send to Paul.

After lunch we head off to the Discovery Centre, which has another walk through the rain forest. The highlight of this is the 25 meter tall tower that takes us up above the canopy of the forest. It’s pretty dramatic how much the light changes as you go up.
The last stop is at the local ice cream stand which specializes in exotic fruit ice cream, using their own-grown fruit. We had wattle, coconut mango, and something we can’t remember.
On the way home there is a bit of a traffic jam. A number of cars are stopped on the road, next to a beware of cassowary sign. There are only about 1300 cassowaries left in the wild, and one of them is standing next to the road, with his chick. The male cassowary does all of the chick maintenance. A pretty successful day.

posted by Jim @ 2:29 AM