day 16: PK’s Jungle Village, Cape Tribulation 16 05’13.4” S 145 27’ 48.0” E Km 7990

Wet long drive today with Cape tribulation as the target destination for today. Arriving between Mount Surprise & Mossman, the road was flooded with a depth indicator at 60cm high. A woman who was crossing by foot told me I should not rely on the signs… yeah right! After a couple of real 4x4 Pajero got through, I decided to give it a try. As it was night, I put my headlights on, and started to cross the flooded road following the white central line. Bad sign, the more I kept going, the less visible the line was becoming until it became invisible. As I was progressing, the car started coughing; I had to play with the clutch not to have the engine to stall. That was a bad idea as the car was now making wave in front and the headlights were starting to get covering by water. That is the moment when you hope the rubber seal around the doors and trunk are good enough so your car does not turn into a mud bathtub with all your packed stuff acting as plastic duck toys floating around. The more I was progressing, the more it was deepening and didn’t seem go the right way until I felt the engine really wanting to stall despite my play with the clutch… That was it, I decided to go backwards. The trick was to change gear without having the water entering the exhaust pipe (full Rev). As I drove backwards, the water line was coming to a safe level… Well, it was not the clever idea of the day. Back at the starting point, I talked with a guy who was familiar with this road. He was waiting for the water level to decrease. I thought this was the good thing to do. 30 minutes later, I decided to give it another go: a little sweat on my hands, same procedure: Clutch 1st, follow the white line, pray for Mr “Rubber Seal” to do its job, start driving, the white line disappeared, holding my breath waiting for reaching the low point. Cool, that was it! The water level started to decrease.

I took the road again reaching Cape tribulation via a ferry. The road from the ferry is awesome even at night with rain, fog & Xavier Rudd in the background.
Stopped at PK’s Village Jungle: A very nice backpacker with very friendly staff. It parties hard up here!

Mangrove leading to the beach