Darwin, Kakadu National Park

December 21

We arrived in Darwin in the evening after a 2h flight. It was pretty amazing to see the landscape shift from dry to tropical and wet. After picking up our second rental car, this time a 4 wheel drive Xtrail, I had to brace the real roads driving on the left side. Thankfully, it was a straight drive to the hotel 15min down a highway and featuring one roundabout and a left turn. Once we got into our hotel and realized they had a laundry room, I set out to wash all of our worn clothes, while Matt was watching TV. When I returned, he had passed out already, so we had another early night in Australia. We did laundry a total of 3 times while down under, and thanks to all these hotels knowing their backpacking, traveling audience, laundry rooms were available everywhere. We had only packed a medium size suitcase each, with about 17kg, so this was a perfect opportunity before we set out to Kakadu National Park.

December 22

The next morning, we spent some time exploring Darwin, which is the biggest city of the Northern Territory and was prominently bombed by the Japanese in WWII, which is featured in many memorials.

The climate is hot and humid, just like ATL, and Matt felt right at home ;-). It was not easy to handle after the mild climate in Sydney and the dry heat at Uluru.

We still wanted to spend some more time in Darwin because our 300km drive to Cooinda would get us in too early for our hotel check in if we left immediately after breakfast, so we decided to check out the Crocosaurus Cove to satisfy Matt's interest in crocodiles.
The Cove is a pretty cool place right in the middle of Darwin's main street where all the bars and restaurants are. They feature 5 or 6 huge crocs, which are amongst the largest in captivity, and really old. Some are about 80 years old and you can't find them of that age and size in the wild anymore at the moment because the big ones were all killed by hunters before they were put under conservation.

They also had a snake feeding show while we were there. The green tree python is not native to Australia's North but as snakes only eat every few weeks and they have a show every day, they just have to take what they can. 

They gave her a dead (warmed) rat, which was pretty amazing to watch as it caught and "killed" its prey and then once it believed it to be dead, devoured. I also have a few videos of this, pretty amazing. 

Then it was time for the crocodile feeding. First they showed us on a model how strong of a bite a saltwater croc had. The model slammed down on a block of ice with such force that the block of ice just exploded into tiny pieces. They said, if you're lucky in an attack, the croc will bite through your arm and leg with one bite, giving you a chance to escape. If you're not so lucky, it'll drown you.

After about two hours at the Crocosaurus Cove we then headed out to Cooinda, with a 300km drive ahead of us. It was pouring down rain in some parts with more water on the road than I've ever seen in my life. Truly amazing to witness the wet season up here.

Our hotel, the Gagudju Dreaming Lodge Cooinda, looked a little bit like the buildings of the Dharma Initiative in the show LOST, so from now on we associated everything we saw with that.

Upon first arrival in Australia we still thought seeing a white Cockatoo was a rare occasion. Nope, not at all. They are virtually everywhere, and they're loud, man are they loud.

December 23

The unfortunate thing about the rainy season up North is that only very few things in the park are actually accessible. The majority of trails are closed due to flooding as the flooding brings the crocs and makes it very dangerous. Basically, anywhere in Australia, you need to be very careful around water, not just because of crocs. We'll get to other situations later where I would've never imagined there to be a danger. You'll see.
With temperatures around 34C/93F and the humidity so high, we didn't want to go on big hikes anyway, so we did the 3 smaller walks that were open in the area. The first one up a hill called the Mirrai Lookout. It took about 30min each way. We had put on long sleeve, dry fit, clothing because we were expecting to get eaten by mosquitoes.

We later realized there weren't that many so it was maybe a bit excessive. But walking amongst spiders like these here, wearing long sleeves also gave me a lot of comfort that I didn't have anything crawling on my skin. Both of these were about the size of my hand.

The lookout was pretty cool and again, looked like straight out of LOST ;-).

 We then drove out to the Nawurlandja Lookout, which lead us up a steep rock surface and gave a spectacular view of the area.

Then we drove over to the Nourlangie Rock, which is the White Man's name for Nawurlandja. This walk was more of an educational one, featuring a lot of Aboriginal art.

After 3-4 h in the humid heat, we were ready for the pool and our Yellow Water Cruise later.

The cruise took off right after a big rain shower, which had nicely cooled down the temperature, making the cruise really comfortable.

The beauty of the yellow water river system is pretty stunning, especially at that time of the day in the late afternoon. The wildlife out there is unique to the eco system and highly dependent on it.

After a few interesting birds, we then finally spotted our first croc on the river bank.

Followed by a few smaller ones in the water.

And then, to Matt's delight, we spotted the big guy, right next to our boat. I still can't believe we got in such proximity to a wild saltwater croc.

We went on the same tour again the next morning in hopes of spotting a few more crocs but to our surprise, we only saw a smaller one very far away. Happy that we'd at least seen a bunch the day before, we then made our way back the 300km drive to Darwin.
It was December 24th, so we went to go see a movie (American Hustle), as there was hardly anything else left to do in the pouring afternoon rain. The next morning, we also had a super early flight at 6 AM to Cairns, so we went to bed early again after Vietnamese dinner in Darwin's central area.