Litchfield & Kakadu - Day 2

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Today is going to be our first day at Kakadu National Park.

Apparently all animals that go wild become "Feral" in Australia. I'm guessing that's just an adjective that allows anyone to shot the beast without any legal implications...it was feral after all.

Feral cats, feral dogs, ...

Our first stop for the day were the Gubara falls. I found the walk quite a pain in the ass and the "falls" to be the worst of the lot although apparently there were some other pools not far off that were quite nice but I didn't get to see them because I didn't know about them and nobody bothered to tell me. :-(

Our guide told us several times to wear our trekking shoes (my best trekking shoes are my sandals). :-)

So everyone was wearing their trekking shoes just to discover that the trail was flooded most of the way and they had to take off their shoes, and put them back and take them off again and so on and so forth...

This are is known to have crocs but they are freshies. Usually what happens every year is that after the rains, the water levels go up so some salties and freshies make it up the river. When the rainy season ends, they always send a few boats to extract all the salties from these pools, they leave the freshies though so when you take a dip in these places you should always look around before you get wet.

As you can see below the place isn't very impressive to say the least.

I also found a nice little fella but I'm afraid the picture is not one of my best...

Anyway, on the way back I found a snake. I tried to keep my distance (remember that everything in Australia kills, it's just a matter of how fast it kills you not on whether it kills you or not) so as I said, I was keeping my distance and trying to take the photo while Aida was chasing the bloody thing trying to work out what kind of snake it was.
I am glad it was the shy type and didn't try to bite her because she got really, really close to it...just for a moment I thought I would have to swich my camera to the video mode in order to record the moment of how Aida got striken by a poisonous snake and died in Kakadu...I'm glad I never got to record that though, but I would have made millions selling the video worldwide. :-)

Finally we both made it back to the bus.

The next stop was Anbangbang the place where you can find a lot of aboriginal paintings.

I'm becoming an expert in photographying insects. You can't imagine how difficult it is to get a picture of a spider...go on, try at home, you'll see it's not as easy as it looks.

20 photos later, this is the result of my best shots. :-)

They look nasty don't they?

Next stop Nawurlandja lookout, a place not without its risks

The views from the top were totally impressive

At night we went to another local camping and for the first time in 4 years I got biten by a mosquito...once! in my left ankle. :-) You had to see all the other people...50+ bites each... and I was the only one not using repelent...my blood seems to be disgusting enough to repel them. :-)

A bit disapointed the first day but I'm hoping things will get better tomorrow. The itenerary looks more promising...


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