Queensland

Some of the highlights of our Queensland trip: we went zip-lining in the Daintree Rain Forest, snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef, saw some platypus, and visited a crocodile farm.  

Zip lining was fun because we got to effortlessly glide around the forest and they even let us go upside down at one point.  I thought it was funny that they didn't call us by our usual name, but gave us code names: I was 'Sponge Bob' and Jeff was 'Papa Smurf.'

Snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef was cool too because the colors of the coral were really diverse and not ones you would expect really, like lime green, electric blue, or deep purple. And we swam with lots of sea turtles, so close we could have touched them if we wanted to.  There were all kinds of crazy fish that we saw (my favorite is the parrot fish).  Some fish were so big, I mistook them at first for sharks.

At the crocodile farm we got to watch crocs being fed, eat some croc ourselves, and we also got to hold a baby croc.  I would describe the whole experience as creepy and fun at the same time.

We went on a platypus search.  They are really shy animals and hard to spot, but it’s worth the effort because they are so cute. 

We also stopped by Brisbane for a few days to enjoy some civilization in the city.

a platypus 

We feel very lucky to wake up to this view from our tent in the morning

  

We saw lots of nice tropical waterfalls

We liked the beaches too

We went 'jungle surfing' as they called it (zip lining through the canopy of the rainforest).   

We loved how the mountains and the forest were so close to the beach.

There was this really crowded pond of crocs that was just so creepy to look at.  The area was just crawling with these killers!  The odd thing was that the fence really didn't seem that heavy duty.

This guy was like the crocodile hunter, he was getting so close to these ill tempered crocs and trying to get them to jump up for their food.

We got to hold baby crocodiles and this one was so strong, it almost got away from me.