Cairns to Atherton tablelands

Five days into our adventure and we are certainly epitomising slow and curious travel, having only made it 70km or so from Cairns as the crow flies. Which doesn't mean our days haven't been action packed. So much to see and do (and eat) up here on the Atherton Tablelands, a lush volcanic landscape, diverse and full of surprises- be they pockets of rainforest, delicious places to swim or produce stalls.

Lots of things have made us happy and in love with cycle touring (today we give it an 11 out of 10!) and this land these past few days:

*riding through a traffic-free backroad in Dinden national park, in lush rainforest in the misting rain, thinking about how different most of the rest of the trip will be.

*getting up on to the tablelands- we survived the climb!

*being greeted by a coffee plantation with cafe soon after joining the main road.

*finding a local fruit and veg stall 500m further down the road

*a local icecream factory 500m further down the road (hm it sure is tricky to get very far when there is the serious job of food sampling to be attended to)

*sunshine

*falling in love with Mareeba unadorned rock wallabies at granite gorge, where we wandered blissfully among the boulders.

*swimming in rivers and waterfalls, gorges and lakes- Lake Eacham, a 55m deep lake in a volcano crater today was especially divine

*making new avian friends- today a huge shifting flock of magpie geese huddled in a paddock, sending out regular gangs westward, a little further down the road were a congregation of sarus cranes stepping perfectly through long grass. Also a yellow honeyeaters, great bowerbirds, little shrike-thrush, forest kingfisher, a huge raucous flock of redtailed black cockatoos and probably more.

*staying with a wonderful family from WarmShowers in Atherton, we knew when we were greeted by 4 smiling boys riding bikes in their undies and a bunch of chooks waddling round the green garden that we were in the Right Place- thanks guys!

The list of things that has made us grumpy is a lot shorter:

*grumpy ranger at Clohesy River telling us you can't camp here go back to cairns (we'd got there over 3 hoursof climbing)

*having to push our bikes up very very steep dirt roads for a couple of hours out of copperlode dam- although ryan said he was having fun, I was swearing like a sailor under my breath.

*not being allowed to adopt a Mareeba unadorned rock wallaby as a pet

Tommorow we go through ravenshoe, the highest town in queensland (it actually gets cold up here) and on to Innot hot springs. starting to cover some real distances as fruit stalls and cheese factories become further and further apart. Any mail offerings can be sent to Normanton.