Hartleys

Day 2 of the hire car, after a bit of confusion with the language barrier, an Englishman, a German and a Frenchman set off up the coast.

We stopped off at Palm cove, which is just so stereotypical of a tropical beach backed by rainforest covered mountains. It was a brief stop, we continued on to Hartley's Crocodile adventures, a crocodile focused zoo with lots of Australian wildlife. It was so so hot today, draining heat from the sun, stark contrast to yesterday and rather unsettling as it is almost "Winter" in cairns. The crocodile show was pretty cool, the guide had them jumping out of the water next to our boat. In the photo are some smaller ones in an enclosure later on.

We drove south, the plan was to go to crystal cascades (a swimming spot) followed by Barron falls (a huge waterfall). At crystal cascades car park we saw some people exiting the forest in swimming costumes so went up that track passing a few warning signs about deadly trees in the area. We followed this track as it got increasingly overgrown, and steeper, and steeper... Until we were forced to conclude there was absolutely nothing this way, it was just a track formed by many travellers taking the wrong path and then backtracking..... 30 minutes later hot sweaty and muddy we walked 10m through the carpark to find a blindingly obvious gently sloping paved ROAD to walk on along to the swimming spot...

When we arrived it was getting late in the day but we were determined to swim. It was amazingly refreshing (though could be more accurately called murky pools than crystal cascades, cairns attractions are very good at marketing to tourists in this way).