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Snorkeling take two. This time we decided to go on all-day (9-hour, with buffet lunch) tour with ☞ Seastar Cruises to Michaelmas Cay and Hastings Reefs (recommended) located 50 km NE of Cairns. Very good professional organization. Because of the distance to the outer reef, we travelled on a larger/faster boat. Seastar provided snorkeling equipment (we brought our own RX masks and snorkels) and offered introductory dives, which we decided not to take, as for first-time divers like us, it would be too much distraction on first visit to the Great Barrier Reef. The weather was good and sunny. The coral reefs were very alive and colorful, with more fish, larger and in larger schools, comparing to Mackay Reef (day 5). Each reef was visually different. At Michaelmas we landed on sand bar and snorkeled from there. Movement on the beach is very restricted as most of it is reserved for protected seabird sanctuary. At Hastings we jumped off the main boat and navigated through channels between sometimes quite shallow reef. We had close to 90 mins of snorkeling at each location – Joanna was always one of the last people getting back on board. Her persistence paid off as she was the only one to spot epaulette shark, a rare sighting on the reef. Overall very exciting and relaxing experience. Seastar crew took pictures, downloadable for free from their fb page (we are re-posting some here with acknowledgement).

Day 7 .

We stopped only briefly in Yungaburra town and continued to Crater Lakes NP, to walk around Lake Echam with refreshing swim at the end, and to  visit  Lake Barrine and check out giant Kauri Pines standing by the lake. We arrived at ☞ Genazzano Campground at dusk.

Day 8.

We had half a day to find tree kangaroos. Malanda Falls were disappointing, but we went for nice short walk in Malanda Falls Conservation Park. Tree kangaroos live there, but they are dispersed and hard to find (no reports of recent sighting). We were advised to go to ☞ Nerada Tea Plantation where restoration area is very small and kangaroos have only small number of trees to hang on to. In short time we were drinking local tea and going in and out of the tea room to check on two tree kangaroos on one of the big trees. Nobody could tell us how many kangaroos live in the area (a dozen?), but another visitor apparently spotted one or two more jumping earlier between trees. We brought black with Australian lemon myrtle tee to Chicago. We quickly aborted visit to Millaa Millaa Falls, as we had to return our campervan before 4 pm – return process at Apollo Cairns was fast and efficient. We already dropped off our stuff at our hostel (☞ Dreamtime Travellers Rest). We spent the rest of the afternoon at quite impressive Cairns Botanic Gardens, located across Captain Cook Hwy from Apollo rental near the airport (we just walked over). Bus 131 connects the gardens with Cairns Central, with our hostel just a short walk away.

Driving our Mercedes-Benz Vito-based campervan was easier than anticipated, despite larger size. We made 506 km. Driving on the left side of the road was also not a problem, Australian open roads are wide and with flat hardened shoulders most of the time (not like Scotland). Drivers are quite careful.

We started the day with short walk on Noah Beach (100 m from our campsite) and good breakfast. We then drove towards Lower Daintree stopping for Madja Botanical Walk, ice cream at ☞ Daintree Ice Cream Company (recommended), Jindalba Boardwalk and panoramic view of Daintree River mouth from Mount Alexandra Lookout. The ice cream was very good, they use tropical fruit grown in their own orchard. We crossed Daintree River and spent some time in Mossman Gorge walking Rainforest Circuit and to Wurrmbu Creek. Mossman was a bit of disappointment, nice well organized water park everybody was enjoying, but not necessarily what we associate with National Parks. The circuit trail was nice, easy and relaxing, part further away from the river not too crowded. We parked for the night at ☞ Tableland Van Park in Julatten, not touristy, laid-back with local flavor.