Port Douglas Sat 6/7, more of the same

 6/7/24 Saturday day 3

Saturday seemed like the perfect day to head to Port Douglas before returning in time for our wine appreciation class at the resort at 4pm. (MUST NOT be late!!)

The road to Port Douglas was narrow and dangerous at times with lots of road works  due to damage from the recent floods. We had to stop 3 times!

Interesting landscape of rocks, boulders and rain forest.  This was my favourite boulder

Port Douglas is much bigger than Palm Cove and you need a car to get around but there are huge numbers of resorts and holiday places as well as restaurants, cafes and all the other normal shops like Coles even.

After lunch we decided we should head to Mossman Gorge which was close and would fit in with the need to get back by 4 (wine appreciation). 

Unfortunately we did not get to do the shuttle to the gorge as there was a hacking issue with one of our cards and we needed to head back immediately etc

Mossman Gorge centre

nice views at the centre from the car park

We then decided to see something! so drove to Four Mile beach. We stopped and took some photos. The tropical weather is great, raining one minute, sunny the next. 

Swimmers beware!

Me at the beach , sunny.

more beach, 4 miles apparently

the car, blue hyundai Venue. Nice

After too short a visit, we were back on the road. The Captain Cook highway from Port Douglas to Palm Cove is right on the edge of the continent. It really is like driving on the edge of the world particularly for Paul who drove. I was able to take some photos from the car about 2 metres from the ocean at times.

We stopped at Rex Lookout for more photos more safely than leaning out the window.

Good news as we were back in time for the wine appreciation. perhaps even a touch early......  Time for a swim in the mineral pool and shower.

And then to Wine Appreciation run by a trained sommelier.  We learnt so much from the hour talk and tasting. Only three wines but we learnt how to define colour and grape.

this was the red and it was very good. I guessed Malbec and got it right. Paul guessed the white chardonnay. No surprise there.

These are very good wines apparently

This is a magic tool containing argon gas to keep open bottles fresh. There is science behind this and we got all the details.  Yep very interesting....

 

And then to dinner finally at the Palm Cove Surf club. I had a gf lasagna which was so good and large. Perfect

and sweet potato chips as an extra as not enough carbs in the lasagna.

After dinner, we joined a couple from Melbourne with whom we had shared canapes and cocktails every evening.  Donna and Jo decided to do karaoke which was on at the Irish pub.  Despite massive reservations (me) we went.

Donna was particularly keen even though she said she could not sing.  She couldn't but loved karaoke. As well as singing three songs as a quartet, we each had 4 cocktails. We had a great night,  so much fun to be with strangers and sing as badly as we could.  Paul was concerned that he would not sing at his best due to a cold. He was still better than the rest of us and even got the crowd going.

Sweet Caroline will now and forever be our signature karaoke song. Such a crowd pleaser.

And even more good news for Paul, Donna is the daughter of Frank O'Brien the famous race caller and was also once married to John Saddler  who won the Melbourne Cup with Efficient and also trained horses for Sheik Mohammed in Dubai.  Donna and her then husband and children lived in Dubai for a couple of years and she also worked for the sheik.

She has since trained as a teacher and is married to Jo, her divorce lawyer. He must have done a good job.

Life is full of surprises,  people and karaoke being two of them.

What a great day!