Far North Queensland Honeymoonniversary Adventure, Part IV: Mt. Sorrow, Spiders, Fig Trees, and Dairy

This will be our last Queensland post (about the last trip, at least), since we've got some other topics we need to get blogging about. So we have four topics this time.

Climbing Mt. Sorrow

We were looking for a nice hike in Cape Tribulation. We were pointed to the most significant trail in the area - a hike up Mount Sorrow. Various signs and brochures warned us that it was steep and required "above average fitness." We figured they were probably being overcautious. 

Still, we did notice that the sign at the trailhead was a bit ominous:

Things were uphill for a bit, then they leveled off for a while. We were wondering what all the fuss was about. But then we came to this:

It might be hard to tell from the photo, but this part of the trail went almost straight up. It was so steep that a rope was attached to some trees for dragging oneself uphill. It was then that we understood the warnings.

Thankfully it was the "dry season." Someone later told us that during 'The Wet,' the trail had so many leeches that it looked like the ground moved.

Even without leeches, we did feel some sorrow, especially when the steep climb turned out to lead to... another steep climb. And another. But we finally made it to the lookout point (a metal cage). 

It was worth it for the view. Here's the scene with a Ulysses butterfly in the way: 

Observing Spiders

There were many spiders. Don't worry, these are all zoomed views, they were not this big. But they weren't tiny, either.

This one was hanging on in the corner of a car park.

We called this one the "batman" spider:

This last one lived just outside the kitchen window of the Cabe Trib Farmstay. The window didn't have a screen... it didn't need one. This spider's body was about as big around as a human thumb.

Admiring Trees

This type of fan palm is unique to this area. We liked them a lot.

We learned that rainforest flora have had to adapt to very difficult conditions and have done so in many clever ways. This is a cauliflorous tree:

An amazing type of rainforest tree is the Strangler Fig. They basically grow in the air, with their seeds landing in a tree canopy and their roots growing downwards along the trunk. They eventually wrap themselves around the host tree, "strangling" it. As far as we could tell, there wasn't an upper limit on how big they could grow.

Here are a few examples:

Here is the "Curtain Fig" - apparently the most popular tree in the Tablelands. It was massive, amazing, and very difficult to photograph:

Consuming Bio-Dynamic Dairy

As avid readers of our blog might know, we like food. In addition to eating it, we also like photographing food and putting the photos on this blog. If you have been disappointed that this series of posts did not include many food photos, this is for you.

We visited the Mungalli Creek biodynamic Dairy in the Tablelands. We thought the sign was cute (you might need to click on it to zoom):

We had a frittata and a 'pot de fromage' for lunch, but couldn't resist having some dessert, to go along with the beautiful view:

This was bush orange cheesecake and a latte. One of the points of pride in the Tablelands is that it is the only area where they can grow all the ingredients for a perfect "cuppa" (in Australian that means a cup-of tea or coffee). Here you can see all local milk, coffee and sugar. This was our favourite meal of the trip. The foam on the latte was unbelievable - so thick and sweet that it felt like eating coffee ice cream.

Coming up soon: Colin goes red.