Encounter with Dinosaur

Day 29

"My home was there and then, those meadows of heaven
Adventure-filled day
One with every smiling face"

With this entry I will try to write more chronological story, starting from early sunday morning when me and 8 other peeps left Darwin for 3-day safari to a nearby Kakadu national park...and when I say nearby we are talking about distances in Australian scale, that means park was 200km from Darwin. Our guide was authentic aboriginal guy who was clearly very emotional about the content of the trip and the land he was showing us, we couldnt have asked for better guide. This is rather long post filled with pictures so enjoy :) At first we stopped 60km from Darwin to see some of the jumping crocodiles in Adelaide River. Now, this place is NOT Zoo, it is NOT theme park and it is NOT even national park yet. This is as authentic as it can get, 100% wild crocodiles in their natural habitat. Morning was pretty cold as you can see.

Ride through river started promisingly, after only 3 minutes we spotted first croc and it started to head directly towards our boat. Guide took out bait so croc wouldnt attack boat. After following bait for minute, the thing jumped!

And it didnt take long to find some more jumpers, like this beauty here.

But none of us was prepared what was coming next. One guy in boat asked: "Is there like any dominant croc in this area?" to which guide answered: "Yes, there is this one huge monster croc roaming around here. We see it once every 7 tours or something like it. Last time we saw it was 4 tours ago." Then, just 2 minutes later guide pointed to river: "I think we found the dominant croc". Yes! There it was, about 30m away sliding quietly on the river, even though 95% of it was below water, we could see it was way bigger than anything we had seen so far. It was completely black...and it turned its attention to our boat. It popped its head out to grab bait and we saw its massive head and jaws.

Then our brave guide decided to lure it to ground so we could truly see its size. It worked and...omg! Everyone was in total awe, that thing was giant monster! It wasnt croc anymore, it was dinosaur.

After we ran out meat for it, it turned its gaze towards our boat. Guide was quite fast with his movements and we backed away rapidly. Guide told us later on campfire that he had gotten little scared there as well cause that dinosaur could have easily flipped our boat and everyone in it if it wanted to.

So the tour couldnt have gotten better start. Next of we headed to ancient aboriginal site where they used to live 20,000 years. Some of the paintings on walls were close to 20,000 years old.

Then we headed to our campsite for the night. Guide gave us some didgeridoo lessons but it was mostly hopeless :) Next day we headed on top of Jim Jim Falls. It was very rough 9km walk to there(400m high) and guide did it barefooted! It was tough but views were definetly worth it. Besides, swimming 230m above waterfall in huge pool with just our group there was great.

It was long with the walk and all, so in evening we just headed out to watch sunset at a river near our second campsite. As you may have noticed from previous posts, sunsets are quite spectacular here.

Next day we headed to see yet another waterfall. This one wasnt as big as Jim Jim Falls but maybe more picturesque. We climbed on top if it to place called Skull Rock. In there was small circle pool in rock, no more than 2m in diameter. If you jumped there, you couldnt get up...only way was tunnel 3m below surface which lead to another bigger pool nearby. I was only one in our group brave(or stupid) enough to actually dive through it, it was so cool! Below is video of my dive(no sound). Definetly beats Uimastadikka any day :)

All in all, a great final day where we mostly just swam around this picturesque waterfall.

Safari costed 400 dollars(245 euro) and I felt the monster croc alone was worth the price. All in all, fantastic 3 days! Finally our group picture next to that final waterfall.