Rainforest Walks

First of all, Happy Birthday Ben!

One of our favorite activities we've done while in Australia has been hiking.  We wanted to share this with Sarah and Hannah and did some hiking with them while in Mission Beach.  We did the Fan Palm Boardwalk and the Lacey Creek walk.  These were relatively short walks, which was good because it was very hot and humid and there were lots of mosquitoes.  We saw several fan palms on the first walk, hence the name.  These are very distinctive plants with accordion like leaves that can fold up in high winds or storms to protect themselves.

We also saw this Strangler Fig.  These plants adapt to the dark rainforest and the competition for light by enveloping another tree sometimes killing the other tree in the process.

Here are a couple of pictures from the Lacey Creek Walk:

This night we ate dinner at Rustica, a great pizza place.  I think we ate 3 pizzas between the 4 of us we were so hungry and it was so good.