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Cape Tribulations, Northwest of Australia

When you buy your tickets to go to Australia, you think that it is going to be like a Disneyland adventure but bigger. Rides here and aborigines there, a bunch of kangaroos jumping around and some freak dressed like Indiana Jones. If, on top of that he puts his head in a crocodile mouth, even better. But mostly beer, a lot of beer, the lager one and the good one.

But be very careful, it is the typical movie bait. More a terror movie than anything else. If Disneyland is the amusement park for the good kids, Australia must be the amusement park for the bad ones. I am not exaggerating. It’s no wonder that most of Australian natives are descendants of British prisoners whose sentence was commuted in exchange for dressing up as colonists. Some thought that it was a bargain, but at the end, it was not a good deal for many of them. Here, as soon as you are not watching out, a shark rips your arm off or a crocodile will leave you looking like hell. There are so many danger signs, that you don’t even dare to leave your car. And I am not talking about signs such as “mind your step” or “beware of the dog”. If you don’t believe it, ask the guy who is on the front page of the local newspaper, although I don’t think he is going to answer. If he did, it would be the first talking head in history, because that was the only part of his body that the crocodile that ate him yesterday left.

Perhaps you think that anybody can have an accident. Ok, like the surf champion whose arm was ripped off by a white shark. The coincidence is that two years later, another white shark took the other one. You can see that here, the signs are not like in California or Brazil, where you can see a “beware of sharks” signs and everybody swimming. Here, when they warn you, it’s because the animal is around. Yesterday we went to the Great Barrier Reef, more that 1000 km long and one of the most famous diving sites in the world. Before diving in, they warned us with a laconic “there are some sharks, but don’t worry, they don’t attack humans”. So “very calmed” we dove in, thinking about taking Pictures of Nemo and all his mates. Not longer than two minutes after, a meter and a half shark faced us, staring at us with his cold, impersonal eyes, like if he was bored of seeing so much human bait. That was probably what he thought because immediately after, he turned around and disappeared.

This morning we decided to rest from all these adventures and we went to the beach. Something that seems simple and easy for two Mediterranean sardines like us, but it’s very complicated when you are in the Coral Sea, especially in the summer when the water temperature attracts all kinds of jellyfish, some small, some gigantic, but most of them poisonous. They are so poisonous that they can cause respiratory failure or a heart attack. Here, the beaches are really virgin because nobody dares to go there.

Nevertheless, we cannot complain. We have been told that at this time of the year the most dangerous animals are not there because it is cyclone and hurricane season. How lucky we are!

No doubt then: if you are looking for strong sensations, Australia is your destination! Joking aside, don’t worry about Australia and its wild animals. If you follow the basic, logical rules and keep always an eye on their warning signs, nothing has to happen. Australia is such an amazing country that we don’t have words to describe. We prefer to share with you some self-explaining pictures…