Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Lazy day, crazy night in Port Douglas

After a great day on the Reef we headed up to Port Douglas - an incredible cute beach town about an hour north of Cairns. Our hotel was about a block of the beach and it was fantastic to go for a long run along the beach and soak in the topicality (new word?!). We opted for a lazy day at the hotel pool - so relaxing and gorgeous!
Lots of lily pads surrounding the pool.
I decided it had been too long since I had cooked, so I made dinner before we headed out for the night.
We were off to Iron Bar - where on Tuesday nights they feature Cane Toad racing. We learned a lot about these little guys - they were introduced to Queensland as a predator to the brown bat and since it has no natural predators they are running rampant.
For the first race they used a raffle system to assign the jockeys to their toads - none of us won the raffle. The second (and final) race of the night is the night is the "Feature race" and they auctioned off the frogs. I jockeyed Whopper and Sierra jockeyed Aussie Aussie Aussie (Oye, Oye, Oye!).
Part of the jockey responsibilities are to pick your toad up and place it in the starting corral...
....and apparently the more love you give to your frog the better. Double O (the guy in charge) didn't go for my fake kiss so yes, I have now kissed a toad...no prince though ;-)
Sierra left no doubt giving Aussie, Aussie, Aussie a nice big kiss!
The toads are put in the center of the table and the jockeys blow party horns to try and entice the toads to hop to the edge of the table. First one to scoop their toad up and race it over to the finish line wins.
Perhaps I have a future in Cane Toad racing because Whopper and I won! The bounty was a bottle of champagne and a free pass to crocodile world. The champagne was promptly shared with my cheering section and the croc tour was given to some guys we met later in the night - don't worry, I got my fair share of crocs on our rainforest tour the following day. Sierra won a Quatro Equis (double the fun of a Dos Equis!) which Leslie was more than happy to assist in drinking!
Cane Toad Champions - February 2011!!!!
The rest of the might may or may not have consisted of a lot of karaoke and a late night black market bakery!!

1 comment:

emily rietz said...

congratulations on the toady victory!