Cape Tribulation – Night Hunting Salty’s

Okay, we drove pretty much all day, through valleys and up perishingly meandering roads, through dense rain forest and dusty old roads, stopping off at random view points……well we are tourists!! we arrived at out destination, late in the evening just as the day was going to sleep, and decided to stay in the furthest northern point, that is for a standard car anyway, we could. A place called PK’s a hostel nestled on a beach, well what more could you want, beer, beach and well a good bunch of lads.

We grabbed something to drink at the bar and got talking to a few people, that had being doing the trip in their Campervan, three girls, Lucy, Grace and Monica, after a few more beers we all decided, in an attempt to freak the girls out, well oiled we got to go looking for salty’s (salt water crocs), armed with torches and TED’s, we wandered through the thick darkness, torches guiding the way, throwing the odd “oh my god what was that!!” just to build the suspense….cause well it was fun ha ha!

Over a wooden bridge, surrounded by the dark and sinister looking mandrakes, the bony like branches slowly skulking in the wind, creaks penetrated the dark silence of the pitch blackness….okay enough of the suspense talk, well we eventually got to the beach. It was incredibly dark… the dark night sky littered with pinholes of light, the noise of the water….well to be honest it was quite tranquil, but we were looking for crocs….. apparently in the dark you can see the crocs as the torch light catches their eyes and make them glow green, we walked along the beach, enjoying the night, light skimming the beach ahead and flicking the odd shimmer of light to the sea….now this does sound made up, but honestly Lenny and Paul’s torch caught a shimmer of green, okay at this point we thought we best stop doing what we where doing, I shined my torch towards the water and my light caught, about 10m out on the water, some green….okay now secretly I was hoping it was a crab or something…..but it would have had to be one hell of a crab, I shined it again and the green was no longer there….so we stopped edging our bets, and moved back to the entrance on to the beach and went back for a game or two of cards, only to return to the beach a bit later.

Someone had lit a small fire and left it, so we took it over, armed with our last few bottles of TED’s, it was a great night….but you could not help but pivot occasionally on the spot to a rustle in the mandrakes.

Now I know some of you, reading this, don’t believe a word of it, but honest this did happen, and yes maybe a little stupid…..but well I had been pretty sensible up to that point, wouldn’t you say?

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