2nd of July 2008

After leaving Trace and Sal I tried to get a ride on the Bloomfield track, a 4WD track going north through Daintree NP almost all the way to Cooktown.
I didn’t get very far that day though, about 2km or something with a Dutch dude (that really loved walking!) driving a Wicked Camper van. And with a wicked you can’t get very far on a 4WD track.. So I ended up pitching my tent next to a river (with croc signs!) for the night and Pete (the Dutch) stayed the night there to and shared his dinner with me.
Next day I got a ride with some people on their way to the top, Cape York. Went through the first pure Aboriginal Community I’ve seen and stopped at the famous pub The Lions Den.
Right after the Lions Den I finally saw my first really poisonous snake, a Brown Snake which is the second most toxic snake in the world. Sadly I only saw it alive for about half a second before we split it in half with the car, trying to break and avoid hitting it :(
I got off at the Black Mountains NP next which are these eerie mountains covered in black boulders. Really unique place with a few animals that lives nowhere else in the world. Went rock hopping there for 30-45 mins (And saw a whole bunch of Black Mountain Skinks) before it came to me that no one could see me and no one knew I was there so if I slipped I would be in a really bad situation. Love to go back there one day though and try to get all the way to the top.
After Black Mountain I was supposed to head back to Kuranda to meet up with Trace again for a reggae festival but I decided to keep heading north instead to Cooktown because I so badly needed a shower and shave and do some laundry because I haven’t had any clean clothes the 10 days.
From Cooktown I decided to head west into Lakefield NP which turned out to be the hardest part in my whole hitching career! I left about 11 in the morning and got about 50km in 3 hours to Isabella Waterfalls far away from any civilization. There I had to spend 21 hours before I got my next ride which only took me another 20km to a river crossing. Took me another 24 hours before I got picked up next!! Longest wait I ever done. But doing these long waits didn’t bother me at all; both spots were really beautiful with flowing drinkable water and plenty of trees for cover and firewood so I could make myself a fire next to my tent when it got dark. Actually I think this experience + Tracey invigorated me giving me motivation back to be on the road. There is such a freedom to it being in the middle of nowhere on your own, only thing that had me worried was that I was going to run out of food but people passing by were really nice and some bikers on their way to the top gave me a couple of cans of peaches and tuna :)
It did dawn on me though that I had to give up the idea to get to the top and go Woofing, there just isn’t enough time and that detour would have taken me over a month to do.
The next place I got stuck after the river for about 3 hours were far from as comfortable as the previous ones though, almost no cover, 30 degrees outside and so much dust in the air whenever a car passed! But I did eventually get a ride, twice actually with the same guy (he dropped me off in a small town he was going to and picked me up another 100km down the road) and we ended up going all the way back to Cairns that night!
So leaving Cooktown to Lakefield I didn’t get to see much at all (shouldn’t have gone to Lakefield to start with, impossible to get around unless you got your own 4WD). But it was another good and interesting experience for me.