Wildlife Habitat

Today was another hot day in Cairns. Mesa got up this morning and went for a run while I showered and got ready to go.  It was so hot out that my shower only felt refreshing for about the first 5 minutes after I got out.

We had a shuttle bring us into Port Douglas today. It's about an hour drive north of Cairns. The drive was beautiful. The road runs right along the coast and all you see is beautiful blue water and bright blue sky.

The shuttle driver brought us right to the Wildlife Habitat. We had already bought our tickets in advance so we could go right in.  Immediately when we entered, a large Cassowary was hugging the main wall.  This bird is massive. It's got huge feet with a middle toe that can do as much damage as if you were shot with a gun. (I think the guy said like a 25 caliber, but that means nothing to me so I can't say for sure).

The park actually houses more than 180 species of tropical native wildlife, including the cassowaries, parrots, wetland waders, koalas, kangaroos, and crocodiles. I think the best part were the wallabies. They're minature kangaroos, and look so much cuter. When you get into that part of the park, they were just laying around. We stopped to take a few pictures and after that they began to come right up to you. Further on you see many more species of kangaroos but there are some which are quite large and can be rather intimidating.

We also saw a Koala show- which was basically a guy that worked there telling us about the Koala habitat, their food, and mating habits. The koala just slept in the tree.

After the show, we did get to hold the Koala for a picture.  He was much heavier than I thought he'd be. The guy doing the show said he weighed about 8-9 kilograms. But since that also doesn't mean anything to me, I determined it was half as much as my backpack so that had to be quite heavy (the airport weighed my bag in at 16 kilograms).

After leaving the park we took a shuttle to Port Douglas' Four Mile Beach. We were so hot and sweaty all day that the beach sounded great. The water however wasn't quite as refreshing because it was so warm. We were told we had to swim inside the netted area because jellyfish were quite bad right now. We didn't stay at the beach very long since the clouds came in. But we walked to town and had some icecream before the shuttle picked us up to go back to Cairns. There were more people on this ride and we were the last ones dropped off.

We made it back to the hostel just in time for pizza night and spent the rest of the evening chating with the people at our table.

Now time for bed! Oh, and happy birthday to my dad today!