Sunday, October 2, 2011

My Kuranda Trip






Kuranda is a tourist town in the Tablelands of Northern Queensland in Australia. I recently rode the Kuranda Scenic Railway up the Atherton Tableland, which seemed like a mountain but was really a high and rocky plateau. One of the greatest engineering feats of Australia, the railway was finished in 1891 and is now used entirely for sightseeing thanks to the road that was built to allow cars and buses to ferry people up. The two hour train ride was in an old fashioned train wide enough for a wooden bench that seated four people and a thin aisle to walk up. It stopped at a few places with great views and allowed us to get out and stretch our legs, get pictures, or read the information provided. After a gorgeous ride, we got to the town of Kuranda. If you like to get shop at expensive boutiques for one of a kind items or if you like browsing and bargaining at craft fairs, Kuranda is a great place to visit. If you aren’t in the mood to shop, try some of the wild life areas nearby. If none of those appeal to you, umm…, the food is really good. It was near the end of the trip so my friend and I didn’t have much money left to buy a lot but as we didn’t have much time before we had to get on the SkyRail and go back down the Tableland, we stopped at a deli for an amazing lunch and wandered the craft market areas. I bought a few beads and found a stall that sold wines made from mangos, not grapes. About two o’clock we got on the SkyRail to fly us down to the station the bus would pick us up at. We stopped at a few stations to get pictures of the rainforest plants and I even saw a peacock that nicely posed for my camera but eventually we got to the bottom of the tableland and went back to our hotel, one more trip done.

However, the next day we were planning to go to The Dome, a mini-zoo above the casino in downtown Cairns, and hold a koala as well as get lots of pictures. See you next week for that post. Click here to view photos I took on my trip.

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