Couch Surfing
I  first heard about the Couch surfing phenomenon from my Japanese friend Masami. I  joined the CS organization in 2010 when I was visiting my family in my city of origin Omsk (Siberia, Russia). While over there, for the first time I met some  people from CS and was impressed with them, particularly with one boy Alan who had already hosted more than ten groups of international travellers. And also Alyona from Sanct-Peterbourg who cannot remember the number of people she has hosted. I was happy to find out about such an interesting organization and to  meet so of its beautiful members.
When I got back to Australia,  I  met couch surfers in Cairns (Australia) in January 2012 for the first time. I  think I was lucky to meet a nice and funny lady from Italy - Danila and then we met other permanent couch surfers in Cairns and other travellers. 

Day 1- Kuranda and Mareeba
We quickly went from meeting for a “cuppa” in the city to visiting the Crystal Cascades with another couch surfer, Steve, and there met up with another group of couch surfers who were hiking and swimming. Suddenly couch surfers were everywhere! 
Picture Crystal Cascades near Cairns
Crystal Cascades near Cairns
It was nice to meet the new couch surfers and to enjoy the beautiful Crystal Cascades surroundings with new friends.  As  well as meeting new friends through couch surfing, Danila and I met Jassin through an advertisement she had placed when she arrived in Cairns, hoping to  meet locals and spend time with them.  We contacted Jassin and invited her along on an excursion to one of my favourite spots in the area, the Atherton Tableland including Mareeba and Kuranda.
From Cairns, I drove the girls to the breathtaking Barron Gorge with the beautiful Barron Waterfalls.
The Barron waterfall is in four sections, with the largest part being 400 foot wide and 900 foot long and the cascade drops down about 350 feet. The falls are  close to Kuranda, a small village built over 100 years ago as a railway siding and of course we stopped for photo
opportunities and had a 'German sausage' lunch. Kuranda has a population of about  700 with approximately 1000  tourists visiting every day.

Our next stop was Mareeba, a small town on the Atherton Tableland established by Italian immigrants. The immigrants arrived in Australia in 1950-60 with little
money or resources and set up farms producing tobacco, coffee, mango, and nuts.  Our first stop was at the  Golden Drop Mango Farm which now has  over 17000 trees.
This farm started as a tobacco producer 60-70 years ago, but when tobacco growing was prohibited in Australia this farm was transformed into a mango farm. Good idea!
Now the owners do not only grow mangoes but also produce beautiful mango wine! We tasted around 10 different varieties of mango wine including a champagne, dry/medium/sweet wines and port and liqueur.  Tastings are $5.00 but if you  purchase one or more bottles of wine, the  tasting is included in the price. We tasted and we bought!! We also stopped in at dried mango Farm and bought some dried mango. It is yummy also!  
Picture Mareeba Historical Museum
Mareeba historical rail displays
I thought that we should include something cultural in our tour so I took the  girls to Mareeba's Historical museum. It is free but a golden coin donation is appreciated.
Almost everything in the museum you can touch and try and the
displays depict the  history of the area with a sense of humour.
We finished our Mareeba visit with a great coffee at Jacques Coffee
  Plantation.  The owner of the coffee farm, Nathan, also offers additional attractions for tourists, including  a film about the history of the farm’s establishment and also a flight over the plantation in an ultra-light plane.  He suggested the flight to us and Danila agreed! A brave girl! To be truthful, I was a bit scared of it but wanted to go as well.
Mareeba is not in rainforest like Cairns. The town is in savanna forest. Here we saw the big termites' mounds and stopped by this one to take photos. Termites
construct the mounds from different pieces of dust and  stones in the area. The interesting fact is that scientists analyse samples from the mounds to determine what natural mineral resources are in that termite habitat
area.
Returning to Cairns we followed a winding road down the mountain and stopped by Bam-An Lookout which provides an  amazing view of Cairns and surrounding
areas.
Picture Mossman Gorge
Mossman Gorge
Day 2: Port Douglas and Mossman Gorge
After our great trip to Mareeba and Kuranda, we decided to go on an expedition to  Port Douglas and Mossman Gorge.
As Jassin was going diving, we found another couch-surfer on the Cairns groups page, and met up with Hoy who also wanted to explore and meet some other travellers.  We set off for  Port Douglas, a famous resort town 1 hour drive to the north of Cairns.
I took Danila and Hoy to the Church of St Mary by the Sea. The church was first constructed in 1911 but had been damaged by a cyclone and was only fully restored in 1988.As a result of the renovations a large clear window in the church enables people to view the beautiful seascape during services and appreciate the wonders of nature.
We had a great lunch in Port Douglas and, as the day was hot as usual in Cairns during the Australian summer time, we decided to go to Mossman Gorge which is quite a bit cooler as the Gorge is in the
rainforest.
The water in the Mossman River was a quite cold but our Danila, a brave lady, went swimming as there were many other’s swimming as well.  We finished our day with a stop at the beautiful Rex Lookout on our way
back to Cairns.

I have really enjoyed my experience with couch-surfing in the Cairns area and recommend it to other travellers who would like to meet up with locals and fellow travellers to share their knowledge and experiences and to make new friends and overseas contacts.

Explore the couch surfing community on
http://www.couchsurfing.org/

Enjoy your travels!
Alla

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