Day 55: Mossman Gorge
While the rain didn’t show any sign of letting up, we couldn’t stay in our hotel hideaway any longer. We headed to the airport to pick up our rental car and drove up north toward Daintree Rainforest National Park. Normally, the drive is quite scenic along the coast – we stopped pulling over at the lookouts as the rain & clouds made everything look the same.
A cloudy view of the coast for our one & only scenic stop
Our destination for the day was Mossman Gorge, which is at the southern end of Daintree National Park. While tourists can drive into the park, there is no parking at the trailhead, so you either have to walk the 2KM to the start of the trail, or take an AUD $10pp shuttle bus. Guess which option we picked?
Just a bit of rain – it’s a rainforest, isn’t it?
It was incredibly humid and rainy, and we unfortunately were wearing long pants and heavy rain coats so we were a bit uncomfortable, but the walk is super easy. You just have to keep an eye out for the shuttle bus to make sure it doesn’t run you over.
Perhaps the bad weather just ruined the grandeur of the place for us, but we couldn’t figure out why this was such a popular spot, nor even why it was called a gorge. In the rain, it just looked like a big river through a tropical forest.
Walking the Mossman trails in the rain. Meh.
It’s a nice river, but we’ve seen better gorges.
We continued north to Cape Tribulation where we were staying for the night at Cape Trib Farm – a family-run working farm which grows only exotic fruits. Igor had booked the farmstay on Booking.com on a gamble as it was a brand-new listing and had no reviews. It paid off! In addition to our private cabin in a banana orchard, we had access to a beautiful, fully-stocked open-air kitchen and dining patio. We ran to the nearest food store and picked up ingredients for a home-cooked Indian food dinner. After a big meal, a bottle of wine, and some time catching up on Wifi (albeit very slow as it was satellite), we were feeling so good, the pouring rain didn’t bother us a bit.
Cape Trib Farmstay B&B
Cooking up some vegetarian “Butter Chicken”
Toasting the rainforest with a bottle of Aussie Shiraz
Checking a few emails while the farm dogs play in the background – Caesar would have loved it here
The “dry season” in Cape Tribulation