On Wednesday morning we drove with Katherine, Shaun and Phil at 7:45am towards Maguk, a place in the Southern part of the Kakadu National Park and again only accessible via a dirt road where 4WD should be engaged. We arrived at 8:30am and then took on the hike through some monsoon forest.
Despite the boardwalk and being in dry season we got some wet feet anyway. I really liked the surrounding landscape in this part of the park.
After a 30 minute hike up the hill we arrived at these nice looking cool freshwater pools where it is apparently very safe to swim in.
Luckily some other people told us about the sighting of water snakes and so we decided to not go in the water, except for Shaun who jumped in anyway. A lot of tour buses have been in the carpark and the content of these buses now flooded the pools. It looked so refreshing in the water and as there were now lots of people there but nobody screaming about snakes, I finally decided to jump in!
And then Charlotte joined as well. We swam up this little stream of water to another pool where you can jump from about 6 meters into the water but it didn't seem too deep. It was a really nice swim, I can assure you!
After about two hours we headed back to the car and Shaun drove Charlotte and me to the carpark in Cooinda where we left our Johnny Cash car. On the way back to the car I slipped but luckily I only got a few scratches on my right leg. Another girl who slipped has probably broken her ankle, poor girl.
We exchanged phone numbers before we said Goodbye to Katherine, Shaun and Phil who would drive back to Darwin. Charlotte and me on the other hand would stay a little bit longer in Kakadu. We drove North after lunch to Nourlangie where you can easily access some Aborginie rock art and the former shelters of the Aborginies of this area.
I like this one particularly. The spirit that eats females...
In Jabiru we bought some groceries and put some fuel in our little car, then we were off to Culling Crossing. This is a crossing to Arnhem Land. You can only get to Arnhem Land with a permission as it is owned by the Aborgines. At this water crossing of the East Alligator River fish gets trapped and that in return attracts crocodiles.
We didn't have to wait long to spot some in the water. I cannot tell if these are freshies or salties but I would be scared to cross here while you see them swimming beside you...
After this encounter we raced to Ubirr to attend the 4pm ranger talk. We were not the only one who wanted to get some inside information from Aborigine rangers about the area.
Unfortunately the ranger wasn't speaking very loudly and somehow we lost him after a short while. So Charlotte and I wandered around by ourselves to see some more rock art.
At around 5pm we climbed Ubirr and had an amazing view!!! I almost felt like seeing Africa, some other people thought the same. What do you think?
We waited patiently for the sunset which was quite nice but not as spectacular as we hoped for. We also saw a few kangaroos grassing and hopping around.
After the sunset we drove to Merl campground although Shaun warned us about the amount of mosquitos there. It was too far to any other campground and it was cheap. After a quick shower and a really quick transformation of the car into its sleeping mode we still had about 30 mossies in the car which we killed before we ate our rice there. It was a very hot night and I didn't sleep too well.
Our next stop: Litchfield National Park!
Yours Aboriginie-rock-art-admiring Stefanie
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Have your say now! Would you do the same thing or would you do it differently? Do you have any travel tipps for me for my onwards travels? let me know!