be sure to rollover ‘notes’ to see photo captions!
We got up at 4:40 am to disembark and fly to Cairns. Once there, we met up with our Cairns tour guide and checked into the hotel. We had free time in the afternoon, so Mom, Aunt Pat and I walked down the Esplanade, got gelato (it’s ungodly hot and humid up here in the tropics), checked out the Lagoon (big outdoor public pool and entertainment area) and picked up a few souvenirs.
We reunited with the smaller Cairns tour group and went to Hartley’s crocodile farm via a highway through the Barron River’s flood plain and acres of sugar cane (sugar cane is the #1 industry in the area aside from tourism). We cruised around the marsh and saw a lot of crocodiless and saw the up-close feeding of three or four. We had yummy canapés and I held an olive python and a baby estuarine crocodile. We saw a croc show and learned more about them, then had a great bbq complete with a ton of desserts.