July 21, 2007

Today I managed to convince Rob that we should go to Mossman Gorge. Shortly after arriving, he agreed that it was a good idea. Since there’s not much written in any of the guide books about it, other than that you should see it, we didn’t really know what we were getting ourselves in for. And when we got up before 6:00am to catch an early bus to Port Douglass, then catch another bus to Mossman Gorge, Rob was looking sort of skeptical. But it was beautiful! And once again, we got there before the crowds (though we certainly weren’t alone) when we arrived at Mossman at about 9:30. First we walked down to the “swimming hole.” This was a beautiful beach portion of the river that runs through Mossman Gorge, which would be lovely to swim in if it were a little warmer. The water was crystal clear and there were beautifully rounded boulders all around. I waded in up to my knees, but decided a swim was a bit much. From there we followed the trail along to a suspension bridge over the same river. We had moments of speculation as to how such large boulders ended up strewn throughout the riverbed. Either glacier or a much more raging river, we decided. Then we began the portion of the walk that was not on a paved path, but still a very distinct path over the scattered tree roots. We walked up a division between two rivers feeding into the Mossman Gorge river, then through a circuit in the rainforest. On this trip we saw enormous basket ferns, ancient trees with flying buttress-style roots, and very old strangler figs. Strangler figs don’t literally strangle the trees they grow around, but use all the available resources themselves so that eventually the center trees can’t survive. The result is a twisting, fascinating growth. It was an absolutely awe-inspiring walk that took us about three times longer than we were told it would, mostly because we stopped to gawk at everything.
From Mossman, we returned to Port Douglass to have lunch and do some wandering and shopping. We ate at a place called “Mango Jam” which had dancing mango logos. I had a delicious pizza and Rob had a lamb wrap – both excellent. Then for an afternoon we hoped would reveal some unique shopping. Unfortunately, there were only one or two shops that we couldn’t have found in Sydney or Cairns. We still had a good time wandering, but opted for an earlier bus back than we had scheduled. This meant that we got home in time to watch most of the rugby match between the New Zealand All Blacks and the Australia Wallabies. However, since Rob is a big fan of the All Blacks, we decided it was better to watch this match in our room. A good match, with the All-Blacks as the final winners. For dinner, we found a “sushi train” place, which we realized shortly after we sat down, was about to close. So we really just had appetizers and agreed to go back for lunch when they would be open.