Day 20 - Kakadu National Park (Yellow Waters)

Day 20 - Kakadu National Park (Yellow Waters)

10/8/2013

We camped late at night, but had time to book a sunrise crock cruise. The next morning we woke up very early and waited for a bus that took about 8 of us to the boats. It was still very dark and scary, as we knew that there are crocs everywhere.

What we saw from the boats was spectacular, the early fog slowly dissipated as the sun started to come out and the crocs all started appearing on the water surface.

trees in the fog

slowly the place is getting a bit of light

A lonely silouette emerging from the fog

There he is

It's a medium size croc, about 3-4 metres long. (big enough for me)

Get closer, if you dare...

Then we saw the birds, we did not expect such diversity and beauty. The birds were taking the spot over the crocs.

A bird of prey on the best hunting spot

The sun is coming out. Remember, there are hundreds of crocs in there...

A beautiful Kingfisher

Nice Kakadunian scenes

A sea eagle

A pelican

Sleeping birds. Too close to the water's edge. Croc's breakfast for sure...

And there he is waiting...

...and making eye contact...

Sometimes they are hard to see....

This bird is really funny. It lives at night mostly under water, then when the sun comes out, it stays on a tree like this, with the wings open to dry them.

Water lilies and their flowers

Not interested...

We ended up spending the rest of the day in Yellow Waters, we really liked the place and needed the rest.

We also booked the nigh time cruise, it started at 845PM. We didn't take any photos, but it was nice to navigate the same waters that we now knew, in the dark, the sounds were completely different. There was also an old aborigine lady on the boat telling us stories and aswering questions. Very interesting.

They did not use the stars for navigation, but for telling what time of the year it was, that way they knew where to go hunting.

Day 19 - Kakadu National Park

Day 19 - Kakadu National Park

9/8/2013

Today I prepared the bike for the trip. I installed 8 stainless steel marine hooks on it, so that now I can carry the bike in a completely different configuration. Before, when I was alone, I was carrying 2 bags outside of the boxes, one with the tent and the other with the mattress and sleeping bag, now I have an extra mattress and an extra sleeping bag, so I need a third bag. Additionally, now I cannot carry the bags on the rear seat, as my fiancee will be sitting there. The solution I came up with was to purchase 3 marine sturdy wet bags and install the hooks so I can attach 2 bags to the top of the panniers and another to the top of the rear box. This solution worked great, here is the final product. I also became very comfortable for the pillion as she now has a place to rest her arms.

I've heard all sort of comments about Kakadu; some told me not to bother, some that the best time to see it is just after the wet season. Anyway, I was too close to it not to give it a go. 

I have to say, the trip from Darwin to Kakadu is long an tedious, not much to see. I felt a bit dissapointed, it was also longer and hotter than I expected. Being this the first long trip for my fiancee, I tried to do as many rest stops as praticable, which made the trip even longer. The result was that it became dark and we were still about 150Km from Yellow Waters, our intended destination. We did the last 100 km at about 60kmh as we started to hear the 'jungle' awakening as soon as it got dark, I was expecting kangaroos, emus, buffalos, or even crocs to pop out in the middle of the road at any second.

During the trip we stopped at the Bark Hut Roadhouse. Very nice.

This is how they used to catch buffalos, the catcher would stand on this thing while the jeep was raging towards to bull. Not much EH&S awareness those days, I suppose.

There is something I do not understand. Maybe there is somebody out there that can explain this to me. At every National Park I keep hearing that the park and the resorts and everything else belongs to the 'traditional owners'. However, all the people working there are NOT aborigines. How does that work out? I would have expected that if it all belongs to them, that they would be in control. Am I missing anything?

We then reached Jabiru, where there is a hotel in the shape of a crocodile, however this can only be seen properly from the air.

See the croc shape on the photo, that's the hotel, we are now inside the head (reception)

A croc display inside the hotel

We left Jabiru very quickly as it was already dark and stil had many k's to Yellow Waters.

Day 18 - Darwin to Litchfield Park

Old note: Please accept my apologies, there are some technical issues with the 'compose' function of the blogger and I can't edit the text. Surely I must be doing something wrong. Tomorrow when I leave Kakadu, I will ring for some IT technical support. The mobile signal and internet here is horrendous.

8/8/2013 - Litchfield park

Here we are again. Finally ended up sorting the problem myself. Apparently Blogger does not support IE8 anymore, and what do you know? Windows XP does not support IE9. In other words, I need to upgrade to Windows 7. Bummer, that means that updating the blog while on this trip is going to be very difficult, as I have to rely of other people's laptops.

Anyway, here we go with the first day...

Today, we started the trip, this time is different, as I have company. I don't know how I did it, but I convinced my girlfriend to come with me for this second stage of the trip; from Darwin to Perth. I must have said something right, which comes as a complete surprise to me. Anyway, she is here and this will make the trip all more enjoyable.

The first day I picked up the bike, installed a few upgrades and we went to Litchfield National Park. On the way there, we stopped at Batchelor. Nice little town, luckily, we weren't blinking and so we didn't missed it. We saw an incredible sculpture there.

This castle is a sculpture created by one of the late residents of  Batchelor

We finally reached the entrance to the park.

We had plans to cover all the areas of the park that we could reach via sealed roads. There are a number of waterfalls, swimming holes, the magnetic termite mounds, etc.

We reached the magnetic termite mounds, these are incredible, in fact all termite mounds in the area are incredible, on the one hand you have the 'cathedral' mounds; these termites create gigantic mounds in the loose shape of a cathedral. Her is one of them.

Yes, I know! It doesn't reeeeaaaally look like a cathedral. You need to exercise your imagination.

There you go! a magnetic termite mound on the front and a 'cathedral' at the back. The magnetic one is over 2 metres high..

Magnetic mounds are apparently very special, there is only one type of termite that makes them like this. These mounds are flat, and they are always oriented from south to north. Many theories about why they do it like that, but nothing really plausible. I guess it just the way they like it!

Then we arrived at our first swimming hole and waterfall. We liked it so much that we ended up spending the rest of the day there and didn't see anything else in the park.

A nice walk to the falls and the rockhole. Recommended!

The walk is well maintained, with cute bridges over the creeks.

Finally the falls and the tourists, of course

We ended up seeing just one waterfall, I'd like to think that this one is the best of all the falls in Litchfield, if you know otherwise, please don't tell me!

Tomorrow to head for Kakadu.