We got up early in the hopes of finding something to do in the morning however since it's off-season, tours are running limited service so we weren't able to find something that fit in the morning before our 2pm booking. We ended up just doing some hikes before grabbing a tasty pizza lunch and heading to the Cape
Trib Exotic Fruit Farm for a fruit tasting. We found this online and booked it over a month ago because we were so excited - this is the reason we came to Cape
Trib. The fruit tasting was advertised as letting us try 10 different exotic fruits in addition to telling us about each one and how to eat them and whatnot. The tasting only runs 3 days a week and doesn't usually run with only 2 participants but since we booked over a month in advance they ran it for the two of us! We both really enjoyed the tasting - we tried
jackfruit (yummy!! super sweet!),
davidson plum (bitter - only looks like a plum, but has two pits instead of one), west
india lime (essentially key lime - we juiced it and added some water which made a nice refreshing drink), dragon fruit (bright pink outside - looks like a white kiwi inside. Not much taste but quite nice spritzed with lime),
soursop (really soft and juicy - very sweet), something that was related to a
lychee, a starfruit (tasted a bit like a green apple),
mangosteen (not related to a mango - it has a thick spongy rind with 5 sections on the inside that you eat. Very tasty. This is what the farm produces commercially), and
snakefruit (the peel is snakeskin like, the fruit makes your mouth go dry). And then there was the miracle fruit. This thing was amazing! It was small and hard with a red peel, kind of like a small cranberry. We only had one to share between the two of us because they are out of season. We cut it in half and popped them in our mouths, sucking on them and peeling them off the seed. A little sweet but not much taste. This is where the real excitement starts though - these fruit block the sour receptors on your tongue for 3 hours or so. Before eating the miracle fruit we took a quick taste of the west
india lime - it only took a little lick and it was really sour. After the miracle fruit though the west
india lime tasted really sweet and we were able to take big bites into it. Yummy! Like sweet lime juice! We also tasted the
davidson plum again which also had a nice taste. Unfortunately miracle fruit lose the sour-stopping power a few hours after being picked so you can't get these in
Canada, but we agreed that this was the best fruit at the tasting. Quite the experience!
We got picked up from the tasting by the Canopy Surfing company which took us up the rain forest to do some zip lining. At each station we were told a bit about the nearby trees and some other interesting facts about Cape Trib and the local rain forest. The last few lines were more thrills though and we went down with no hands and then upside down. On the walk back to the car we saw an iguana (and were told that when this type runs, it stands on it's two hind legs but it throws it's head back so can't see where it's going - it just runs until it whacks into something :)
We drove back to Cairns in the dark and checked back into our hostel for the night. I didn't properly complain about this hostel previously so I'll do that now. Travellers Oasis in Cairns - it's nice enough but they really bothered me because they didn't keep any soap in the washrooms. When we first checked in I found soft soap in one washroom but not in the one near our room so I mentioned it at the front desk. He said "OK thanks" but they never filled the soap in the washroom in the next 5 days that we were there. Since we were in India we had lots of hand sanitizer for ourselves, but it bothers me to be opening doors and flipping lights (and using the kitchen!) when you know that there isn't any soap in the washroom....
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