A Day at the Cairns Tropical Zoo

The last week we have spent camping on Fitzroy island and spending some time in Port Douglas celebrating our one year anniversary. My sister is now home after being a part of our travels for a month. She toughed it out with us through all those cold nights of camping. She lead the way in through various hikes, and she never complained when she was squished in the back of the car with our luggage during those long hours on the road. She's a great travel buddy and we were happy to have her with us. Doing a bit of catch up here. Today's post is about the Cairns Tropical Zoo and then I will have some coming up on our time spent chasing waterfalls in the Tablelands and our last days with my sister on Fitzroy Island. 

When we arrived in Cairns, we wanted to simply relax. We had just completed our road trip and wanted nothing more than to take a breather and not do anything for a bit. We chilled out and enjoyed the warmth of the sun. And believe me, we were extremely happy to see the ocean and walk around in shorts and t-shirts. 

Who doesn't get excited for a day at the zoo?! There are some aspects of life we need to keep a childish excitement for. This is one of mine. The day prior my sister received some crummy news from a volunteer opportunity that she had arranged almost a month ago. They called to cancel it almost last minute and she was pretty bummed out about it. We had already planned on visiting this zoo but after the crap news we decided to bump it up immediately. 

We took a bus from the city centre and got off right in front of the zoo. The zoo itself is right at the foot of the rain forest and mountains. As we walked between huge ferns and looked up at the side of a mountain filled with tropical trees  we could easily forget we were at a zoo. 

The zoo is small and intimate but filled with many of the Australian animals that we have grown to love and have a respectful fear of. We enjoyed the majority of a day here. Take a look!

We caught a bird show, which was my favorite part of the day. We fed some roos, wallabies and pelicans. We saw dingos, an array of lizards and snakes (some of the world's deadliest), wombats and crocs. It was a fun filled day.

Like I said earlier, the bird show was my favorite. The snake show on the other hand just furthered my fear of some of the snakes in this country. As much as Australia has some pretty scary animals, they do not have anything that hunts humans like a mountain lion or bear. Nevertheless, the fear of actually stepping on a taipan and getting injected with enough venom to put down an elephant is scary....very scary! During this show, the handler brought out a brown snake and a taipan; both at the top of the most deadly snakes in the world list. I think I might have peed a little in my shorts. I couldn't even get a photo of the brown because it was moving so fast and mostly because all of my attention was on it and where it was trying to move; I was frozen.

Enough about the scary snakes. 

After this, we spent some time at our hostel in Cairns planning out the next three days we would be spending at an AirBnB home in the Tablelands.