Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree rainforest. Here is when to go, what a day costs on site and what to see, then Okela composes your itinerary hour by hour.

Compose my trip to CairnsSee Cairns in Okela

When to visit Cairns

Best months: May, June, July, August, September and October.

What to see in Cairns

1. Grande Barrière de corail (excursion bateau)
   From Cairns, a day on a boat takes you out over a living reef, where you float a few metres above corals and fish in unlikely colours.
2. Kuranda (Skyrail & train)
   Kuranda can be reached by air or by rail, and both routes cut through tropical rainforest, from the canopy to the gorge.
3. Cairns Esplanade Lagoon
   Cairns has no swimmable beach, since the waterfront is mudflats and the sea here is known to be unsafe.
4. Forêt de Daintree & Cape Tribulation
   This is where one of the world's oldest rainforests runs right down to the sea, and Cape Tribulation's beach opens onto the reef.
5. Gorge de Mossman
   The gorge lies in Daintree National Park, inside the World Heritage listed rainforest and on the traditional land of the Kuku Yalanji people.
6. Palm Cove
   Palm Cove is a long, quiet beach north of Cairns, lined with old paperbark trees whose pale trunks and leaning branches shade the whole waterfront.
7. Fitzroy Island
   A short ferry ride from Cairns, this rainforest island gives you coral beaches and Great Barrier Reef water you can swim into straight from the shore.
8. Rusty's Markets
   This covered market in central Cairns brings together growers from tropical Queensland, so you taste the region through what grows around the city.

A sample itinerary for Cairns, three days

Composed by Okela from the places in its database, with times. Yours takes your dates, pace and group into account.

Budget

Expect about €176 per person per day on site (accommodation, meals, transport and visits), depending on the comfort you choose. Okela shows the price of every step of your itinerary.

My Cairns itinerary, hour by hour

Road trips through Cairns

More destinations: Australia

Photo: Frances76 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.