upon leaving tropical north queensland.. (tiny update)

I'm not too sad about it. as the beautiful french girl in my hostel put it, the nature is great but it's stress stress stress. to begin with, cairns was all about tourism and young people, positively teeming with this teenage discontent and hormone overload. "there's a crack in your chest" was the joke-on-repeat by one of the local guys (and definitely one of the funnier moments); the whole male section of the table seemed to agree that it would be ok for him to "stick his finger in," seeing that he was gay...

On to sail to the Barrier Reef! This trip was discounted by more than half, so I went; but then we didn't sail for lack of wind. that was a downer somehow... There was an odd melange of people on the boat. The crew consisted of uber-ego skipper Tony was reminiscing his days on Wall Street where he would fire people all year round, the Canadian chubby divemaster tried to make everybody go diving all the time (every spot was her "favorite", kind of lame after the second time), and the cook, who was definitely lowest on the food chain and tony was keeping in shape with her...

Then I was swinging in the ecologically correct "Skyrail" over the tropical, world-heritage protected rainforest around cairns, all the way up to a tiny ex-hippie town called Kurunda. I went there mainly because I liked the name, but the place was disappointing, full of markets with rubbish, rien que de touristes..

Trying to make peace with the incredible expenses adding up. Birds, farns on trees, lush green, a Crocodile Dundee character giving a tour, showing the parasitic fig tree, the smart climbing vines with sticky thorns, the evil heart-shaped stingy plant that will cause you pain for a year. Apparently, when in doubt, "pee on it" is a good guess and advisable more often than not. Undulating hills, birds' and the cabin noises evoked skiing memories which mingled bizarrely with the hot humidity of the rainforest. during the last section of the trip, thunder set in and the cabines stopped moving and in a pleasantly spine-tingling moment, I dangled over an allegedly crocodile-infested coffeebrown river.

Then I went up to Cape Tribulations, a incredibly beautiful scenery in a World Heritage area (again..yawn.. ;)) of the oldest continually growing rainforests on earth (120 million years of uninterrupted growth; they love their superlatives here). The great thing is that the rainforest grows right to the beach, which is stunning and deserted, as it is off-season and you can't swim in the sea where box-jellyfish, crocodiles are awaiting.
there are mad pigs and giant spiders in the jungle, and all kinds of creepy creatures but half of it was probably a lie. The guides love to tell tall tales(and are probably paid for it), they are doing their best to keep up the image of the crazy aussie. All of them were characters in demeanour and appearance.

meeting three great girls up at cape trib much improved the short, humid and overheated stay: after cooling off in the pool we had the most random conversation. my proud input was my sketchy knowledge of porn studies.
The girls had at least seen about a snake and a crocodile each, I only saw a frog. It was a big one, yes, but still...

anyhow. guided tours make you feel Japanese and/or old, and in my case, grumpy. there was a sticky swiss guy in my group who insisted not only on waffling during the driver's (more or less informative) talks but his utterances went along the line of "all-inclusive is just the best." I mean, I did open my mouth (at first. then I just stopped and tried to shake him off and even chose a solitary single seat on the way back). the way up offered beautiful vastness, a drive through sugar cane and banana trees, with mountains all around hugging the horizon and the cloudy sky. entering rainforest territory of the Daintree, the road started to explore all dimensions which resulted in my feeling quite dodgy (or it was the swiss guy). on the way back, there was "croc-spotting" and daintree ice cream (banana is not a good idea, even sugary one makes a a crappy ice cream in my opinion. by the way, my other culinary conviction formed here concerns pies: e3even the contest-winning pies in cairns couldn't convince me; I think steak and gravy and savory stuff has nothing to do with pies).

Apart from the general stress thru too many options (I realized that I am mainly reading commercials) and different and comparatively complicated ways of conducting things, I had moreover troubles with my credit card and the ridiculously low limit as well as a weird charging cycle. They got really nervous and called and I had to call them back from up there - from the wilderness of Cape Trib, where cell phones don't work anymore, where the police didn't go until the 1990s and where "the shop" was 4.5 km away from where I was staying... The latter information is definitely true - I made the stupid mistake of turning my back on the 28AU$ deal of lunch at my flashbacker hostel and instead walked to the shop: when I got back, I was not only exhausted but had eaten all the food I'd bought, probably the equivalent of a whole bread...

more soon, on music, climate, people and too many germans...