Holiday Day Eleven- Part Two Hartley's Lagoon

After our excellent day at Kuranda we decided to head to Port Douglas. This meant that we had to say goodbye to our base, Cairns Coconut Resort.

Goodbye cool birds (they stand still when the are scared) 

 Goodbye cool cars (we all had a ride)

I've said it before but I can't recommend the resort enough. I've found this You Tube clip from the Today Show which shows you a little more of the wonderful place we called home.



On the way to Port Douglas we spotted a sign for  Hartley's Crocodile Farm. Hartley's offers tours of their swamp and crocodile farm and you can get up close and personal with a crocodile or two. Who could resist that!

While we were waiting for our tour we decided to have lunch. This delightful, cheeky girl then caused me a big problem when she (in cahoots with her brother) managed to knock my sunglasses into the toilet bowl. I refused to get them out so Mark rode in on his white horse, fished them out and washed them for me.

He was rewarded for his heroic efforts with this crocodile pie.

Then it was time to head off on our tour. This is the boat we travelled in. 

Thanks to warnings like this ^^, the boat was deathly quiet once we were out on the water. I think most of us were imagining huge crocodiles attacking the boat and tipping us into the water. Almost as soon as the boat moved we were circled by a massive crocodile. The guide proudly advised us that he was the biggest croc they have and he could tip the boat over if he really wanted to. The silence was deafening.

This is how close the crocs came to the boat. We could have reached out and touched them, thankfully no-one did.

Two crocs being fed at Hartely's 

The crocs were fed meat on a stick, prompting them to jump high and snap their jaws. The jaw snap of a crocodile is one scary sound.

This is just how close we were.

This guy was waiting for us at the boat exit point. Apparently they open their mouths to cool down.

Hartley's was a fantastic place to visit although it was very hot and humid when we were there. They also offer tours of the rest of the crocodile farm and they have may other native Australian animals on show however we decided not to do that and instead we left to finish the journey to Port Douglas.