Kuranda- the rainforest village- can you say tourist trap?
Another earlyish tour day today. Kuranda sits amongst the tropical rainforest on the banks of the Barron River. It is a popular tourist attraction so we thought we'd check it out. In this kind of attraction, it turns out that getting there is most of the fun. We travelled to the village via Skyrail, gliding along in a gondola over the rainforest canopy.
Beautiful views from the Skyrail...
The skyrail stopped at two points along our approximately 7.5K journey- both were rainforest walks. The first walk we took as a guided tour. Our Aboriginal guide Billy took us along the path and explained the trees and plants and their medicinal uses and told us about a few of the Aboriginal tribes in the area. He was very knowledgable and had been taught what he knows about the wildlife from his grandfather. Cool guy! The second stop was at Barron Falls and there were a few scenic lookouts...
After navigating the boardwalk ourselves on the second rainforest walk and going to the information center, we boarded the skyrail again for Kuranda. When we got there we saw a ton of tourist shops, (surprise, surprise) ate lunch, looked in a few shops and headed for the attractions.
Mike chose the Snake Venom attraction, which was basically a guy who had some venomous and non- venomous snakes and lizards and he let people look at them in his dingy warehouse and gave little tours. We had our pictures taken with his water python at the end...
Next was the Butterfly House, so I could practice my photography skills (or lack thereof). We really did not make good use of our 2 hours there and soon it was time to go.
We took the Kuranda Scenic Railway back and got information about the building of the Railway and more scenic views.
After pretty much a full day on the Skyrail, at Kuranda, and on the train ride home, we were beat. Got back to the room to chill before our awesome dinner at the Tamarind restaurant in our hotel. The weather was perfect and another awesome day in Oz!
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