Oh Maties, the Rainforest!

Stephen, Macky and I went to the Daintree Rainforest. (Cindy has informed me that this forest is 135 million years old. I believe that.) We opt to go for a bush walk. ( you guys already have the picture of us at the top of the walk) It is going to be a simple walk, 3.5 k up and 3.5 k down. No problem. I just wear my crocs. ( Not the live ones) The sign at the beginning of the walk says to allow 7 hours. Hmmm. Seven hours for less than 5 miles. Right. We start. It is up hill. Definitley up hill. Right off we are all huffing and puffing so that we can barley talk. Our chit chat goes something like this:" Steep" "yah" "Wicked" "Yup" "Beautiful" "uh" "True bush walk" "Yaa" Bush indeed. The density of the population has to be 2x that of Bejing (only taller).This place is thick with vegetation. We are constantly ducking under,climbing over,pushing aside or squeezing between or around trees, roots,vines, palms and ferns. The path we are following is small,hard to follow and covered with vegetation. If Stephen or Macky get 5 meters ahead of me I cannot see them. The ground is covered. Roots are everywhere, crisscrossing, recrossing and crossing again. They go on for 20-30 meters and are sometimes two foot tall. Vines hang like someone toilet papered a house. Vines of all sizes, some as big as your leg. Most of the vines have stickers,thorns or jabby things all over them. Some vines have large barbed hooks on them and hang down like Vietnamese booby traps. They grab you and cut as you go by. I begin to believe that sci-fi stuff about vines. There are these trees/vines that are called strangler figs that do just that. These figs slowly,very slowly over hundreds of years engulf a tree and kill it, all the while using it as a framework for its own growth. When their deed is done there is an eerie lacework of vine like branches in the shape of the former tree. Its spooky in a way. These fig trees in turn are used by other plants, but that is happening everywhere. Branches,forks of trees, tops of palms or the "basket" of a fern are all covered with other plants robbing Peter to pay Paul. There are these Fan palms that look like ridged potato chips but are 2 meters in diameter that house another kind of palm that looks like a house plant gone wild. It is an exotic,eerie,and wild walk. We climb for an hour non stop and reach a sign that tells us we have gone 1.5 km. Less than one mile an hour. Hmmm. Near this sign we meet an Aussie on his way down. He says "It gets steep up there". I say " you mean it hasn't been steep yet?" "Nahr,its pretty steep for the next 300 meters". Stephen says "Chit", I think it. Soon enough we know what the bloke means. We are in full time fourwheel drive. All I can see is Stephens butt and Macky can only see mine. We are climbing nearly straight up. We, as you can expect, get to the top and the look out is spectacular. It is an absolutely amazing ecosystem to see. But Stephen says it best " This is good chit, thick nature chit. Amazing chit". Strangler Figs: