Thomson Airlines Boeing 757 Explorer One (G-OOBF)
Port Douglas, Australia
Sunday, February 14, 2010

    Happy Valentine’s Day! I slept the whole flight from Samoa (SAM-oh-ah, not sa-MO-ah) to Australia. It helped some. After the easy check-in in at the hotel, I was ready for more sleep. The Sea Temple Resort where we are staying is very nice. It is much like the other timeshare resorts around the world. My suite is a self-contained apartment with two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, and a washer and dryer! It was great to get all my sweat-soaked clothes clean and fresh.

    After the sleep on the plane and the good overnight sleep at the resort, I felt much better. The ‘ol GI tract wasn’t totally recovered, but it was behaving fairly well.

    Today, we divided into two groups – those boating out into the Great Barrier Reef and my group that visited the Daintree Rainforest. The nineteen of us took a short bus ride to Mossman Gorge where we were met by our indigenous guide, Rosie. She is rather special since she is the only female guide in their male-oriented society. Rosie took us through her rain forest explaining how the indigenous people used the forest as a source of food, shelter, and as a source of materials for tools and weapons.

    The rainforest lived up to its name today. It rained off and on quite hard through the morning. We were fairly well protected in the forest by the canopy of plants over our head, but got soaked in more open areas. It made little difference, though, since we were all thoroughly soaked already from the humidity and our own perspiration.

    Following our guided tour through the rainforest, we had tea and cake and were treated to a performance on a didgeridoo by another indigenous resident of the Mossman Gorge community. They operate a small gift shop and I purchased a book on the area written by the locals.

    Our next stop was a private rainforest garden called the Botanical Ark. This is a place where a couple moved to about 25 years ago. The property, on the edge of the remaining rainforest, had been completely cleared for raising cattle at the time. Over the years, the couple, Alan and Susan Carle, has re-planted rain forest plants on the property. In addition, they have worked with the quarantine control ministry of Australia to allow them to travel the world, select, and plant rainforest plants from around the world. They visit jungle and rain forest areas, talk with local tribes to learn what plants are used as medical and food sources, and then add them to their twenty-acre garden. At this point, you would be hard pressed to know that the area had not always been rainforest.

    They are now nearly self-sufficient as far as food sources go. A wide variety of the plants are in fruit at any time during the year and they can go out and harvest complete meals for the day each morning.

    Alan gave us a tour of the gardens in a pouring rain shower (we were all provided umbrellas). After the tour, we were all treated to a fabulous lunch made entirely from the fruits and vegetables harvested from the garden that morning. That is, with the exception of the excellent local fish that was served. I bought a copy of their book that describes their efforts and includes recipes that they have developed.

    A fun demonstration followed lunch. We experimented with what Alan calls the miracle fruit. It is a small red fruit with a large pit that has the ability to make everything taste sweet. The experiment involves first taking a slice of lemon and tasting it to make sure it is sour. Then you place one of the red fruits in your mouth and over a period of two minutes or so, gently use your tongue to remove the flesh from the pit and let it coat your mouth and tongue. Discarding the pit, you re-taste the lemon and lo and behold – it tastes sweet! The effect is that everything you taste for the next hour or so will have a sweet taste, but the effect does wear off.

    Returning to the hotel, I decided to rest and recover. I even decided to forego dinner and just let my system get back to normal. Tomorrow morning has a small outing planned, but then it is back to the airport for the trip to Cambodia. We will have two full days and three nights in Cambodia, so that will be a pleasant change of pace.