Port Douglas Arrival

Thursday marked the first day of our four day parental getaway to Port Douglas, Australia. We left the girls in Nina and Grampi's capable hands, boarded a plane to Cairns, and three hours later we walked out into the hot humid air of Tropical North Queensland. 

We arrived just about lunch time and decided to pull off the road at one of the northernmost Cairns beaches - a little town called Palm Cove. Here we got a big and delicious lunch at the Chill Cafe and walked across the street to admire the palm lined beach.

We noted the public bottle of vinegar by the walk down to the beach. They use vinegar to ease some of the pain from jellyfish stings. Sydney beaches sometimes carry warnings about blue bottles (aka Portuguese Man O'War). They tend to blow in after a few days of Northerly winds - or so we've learned. I've swum in the ocean in Sydney when there were jellyfish warnings. Lots of people were swimming. We kept an eye out for jellies and saw a few here and there but it didn't seem to deter people.

We came to find out that stingers in Queensland pose a more serious threat. The box jellyfish found there is translucent and the tentacles are long and can get wrapped around swimmers releasing toxins, causing severe pain and in extreme cases even resulting in death. Stinger season lasts from November to May. Many of the area beaches provide special netted areas for swimming - much like Sydney area's shark nets. Yup. Australia is not for sissies.

After an hour's drive we arrived in the tourist outpost of Port Douglas. Once we checked into our hotel we decided to survey the nearby Four Mile Beach. We were surprised to see almost no one on the beach. In part that's because the peak tourism season is in winter.

Then we looked a little closer at the sign on this beach. "Crocodiles may be present in these waters." Hmm. I had told Brian that after seeing alligators in Florida I didn't find crocs all that exotic but then I don't know that I've ever seen alligator warnings on a public beach. We came to learn much more about crocodiles on day three of our trip. For Thursday these signs were just enough to make the hotel pool look like a better option.