Cairns: Kuranda Day Trip

At the end of our Raging Cairns holiday, Keb and I decided to stay a couple extra days just to kind of recover from the craziness of the activities we’d been on. Unfortunately, at this point we both got a mutant cold and were looking and feeling pretty disgusting. Nevertheless, we booked tickets on the skyrail to go to a place called Kuranda.

All the essentials

A lot of people had told us that we should see this place. It has a butterfly and bird sanctuary, lots of little cafes, a scenic walk and some markets. Kind of a cross between a hippy and touristy village, in a way. There are a couple of ways to get there. One is by skyrail, which is what we chose. This is where you basically get a cable car ride from the bottom of the mountain to the top with a stop in between to check out some scenery. You can also get up by car but it isn’t really a great way to get up there when the weather is wet.

As you can see it was wet the day we went, but it was rather beautiful. We stopped halfway up to see the waterfall too.

After a brief lunch (hooray for burgers!) we headed to the butterfly sanctuary where we wandered around the enclosure trying hard to take at least one good photo of a butterfly’s wings. I don’t think we were particularly successful. If I were to be honest, I don’t think this place was quite worth the number of dollars we spent to get inside. Maybe there was an extra bit that we missed…

Next we decided to go to the bird sanctuary. This place was far more exciting than the butterfly place. Keb, being a kindred spirit to birds, was particularly happy wandering around and pointed out various birds to me.

There was an area where you could feed birds too and they would happily sit on your shoulder for a while. One bird was a little too friendly as you will notice. It really liked the green sticker on my shirt…

After that we stopped for a refreshing drink at one of the many cafes. We also wandered in and out of various stores and checked out a small portion of the markets.

By the afternoon I was desperate for a cup of coffee but Keb was less than enthusiastic. I left her behind at the skyrail place to nap while I wandered off for my caffeine hit. It was a pleasant walk and I enjoyed my quiet time watching people as they sauntered by.

I eventually headed back and we sat together for a while wallowing in our sickly misery until it was our turn to get back on the skyrail and head down to the bottom of the mountain again. I’ll leave you with a few shots of the view on the way back down.

But just one more thing before I go. If, or perhaps when, I go back to Cairns, I’d love to go back to Kuranda and properly explore the place. You know, maybe even spend a night there, take my time in a nice little cafe somewhere and wander through all the market stalls. It seems like it could be a happy place fore me.