Backpacking in Wooroonooran National Park
Queensland, Australia - November 2001
Two days in the rainforest -- just don't touch anything! (Even the plants bite in Australia!)
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| Kris finds a cast-off shell. | Lots of nasty, pointy, sharp things in the rainforest. And some of it's poisonous to boot. (It's Australia, after all.) | |
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| Speaking of nasty... this thing's covered in little needles that'll inject you with a poison that will burn like hell afterwards every time your outer body temperature changes... for three months!!! | ||
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| That's one heck of a big spider... | ||
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| Chef Shawn preparing to give his "Fine Cooking in the Rainforest" class... | ||
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| Here's Amy exacting revenge on the nth leech that tried to suck her blood. | A bijillion of these guys (cicadas) can make a serous uproar. It's no joke that when they all get going at dusk, you actually have to shout over them. Thankfully they quiet down when it gets really dark. | Our rainforest hammock camp... it was wild that you could hear the sound of bat wings flapping through the air in the night. |
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| Yup, they are as uncomfortable as they look. Beats sleeping on the ground if the rain comes though. (Kris and I lucked out and got to demo some more comfortable ones.) | Andrew is demonstrating his bloody zombie look after walking into a single "wait-a-while" vine. These fine hanging barbed vines are incredibly strong. He was lucky in that they usually don't come free -- you have to gingerly back them out. | |
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| This is quite the swimming hole and very deep in the forest. The one trail here is not even well known. On the way back, we encountered the first other group that our guides have ever seen out here. | ||
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| An interesting shower from under part of the waterfall. | ||
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| We had wonderful weather and barely got any rain. Which is just as well as we got to miss out on the legions of leeches that get flushed out in the rain. |