Australia

The Daintree is the one rainforest on this list that is older than the Amazon. The Wet Tropics of Queensland, World Heritage listed, run from Cairns north to Cape Tribulation, where the forest walks straight onto the beach and the Great Barrier Reef starts just offshore. Fan palms, strangler figs and plants with lineages going back more than a hundred million years grow here, and the southern cassowary, a bird taller than most people, still walks the roads.

The stays in this directory sit in three pockets. Cape Tribulation and the villages just south of it, Diwan and Cow Bay, are the deep end: reached by a cable ferry across the Daintree River, about two and a half hours north of Cairns, with spring-fed creeks you can swim in, safari huts on stilts and orchards of exotic fruit. Kuranda, thirty minutes above Cairns on the range, gives you rainforest and river frontage with the city within reach. Most of these places are owner-built and off-grid or close to it, and several ask you to arrive with an open mind about the insects.

The dry season runs roughly May through October and is the comfortable window: warm days, lower humidity, and the sea free of box jellyfish once stinger season ends around May. December through April is the wet, when the forest is at its loudest and the waterfalls at their fullest. Never swim in the estuaries or river mouths; the saltwater crocodiles are real and the creek swimming holes exist precisely because they are above their reach.