Cairns, Cape Tribulation and LEECHES!!!

Hey all,
I've been having a great time in Northern Queensland after saying bye to my bike and spewing carbon dioxide from the flight I took up here. Spent one night exploring Cairns (super pretty) and tried to go for a run, but heat + humidity + the middle of the afternoon made for a really sick Candice who had to turn around and walk back from her ambitious run. (Almost pulled a Vanessa - puking on the side of the road... eep!)

Up in Cape Trib, I've been learning a ton about the rainforest that we're in (it's a complex mesophyll to notophyll vine forest!) and went on a Jungle Surfing tour and a night walk to see lots of spiders. I've been swimming in really neat places without any crocs, but I saw one on the road this morning on a bike ride I did. (I managed to find a local willing to lend me his bike - no gears and a bit big... the continuously hilly ride was quite a workout!). A couple days ago I hiked up Mount Sorrow through the rainforest - a 4 km hike, but it's through thick rainforest vegetation, through spider webs, avoiding wait-a-while branches that catch clothes and skin and pulling off hundreds of leeches that started halfway up! Ew ew ew... I almost had a mini-freakout in the middle when they crawled into my shoes via shoelace holes. At the end of the hike we had nice fat leeches inside our shoes. Ew ew ew... so gross! Definitely worth the hike though - you climb all of the elevation at the end (about 680 m) and the lookout was fantastic (after a quick deleeching).

Hope you're all well and I hope to get some pictures up soon when I get a better internet connection! On to the Whitsundays!