Beautiful morning river cruise, but everything else was closed...

Sunrise on the Yellow Waters tour
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May 4: Litchfield National Park to Kakadu National Park (Mileage: 6162 km)

One of the highlights in the "Top End" is Kakadu National Park.  Known for tons of great swimming holes, aboriginal art, river cruises, and awesome hikes, the park is a very traditional holiday point for all who go to Darwin.  In fact, it is pretty much the reason to go to D.  However, much of it was closed due to high water levels.  Fortunately for us, we had gone to Litchfield and seen much of the aforementioned type of Top End scenery.  Shame that we didn't get to see Jim Jim Falls or Twin Falls, but what can you do.

Crocs, dingos, and birds!

Sunrise on the Yellow Waters tour
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We stopped into a very nice caravan park for the night and just hung out and relaxed by the pool.  Prior to going swimming, I ticked off another wildlife sighting from my list, as a dingo walked casually through the site like I wasn't even there.  Quite honestly, it was a dull experience, since they basically just look like a wild version of house-trained tame dogs...

Ended the evening by making another tour group quite jealous of our feast - we made chicken breasts stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes and feta, and a nice spicy tortellini dish, while they were munching away on stir-fry made from a bag of frozen vegetables...  Sucks to be them!  ;)

Sunrise on the Yellow Waters tour
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Organized a river tour for 6:45 am the next morning.  Mary told me that she heard that was the best time to take the Yellow Waters tour, since more of the bird life was actually out to be seen.  I was skeptical about taking the tour at all, and that early seemed ridiculous.  Boy was I wrong.

The tour turned out to be some of the most fabulous scenery we saw on the trip.  The river was completely flat and still, allowing for beautiful reflections of the swamps, riverbanks, and sun rise to which we were privy.  We even got to see the extended version of the tour since the high water levels gave the boats access to other areas of the park.  As for wildlife, we saw tons of beautiful birds all around us, from eagles, to kingfishers, kites, egrets, ducks, etc.

Reflections in the swamp area of the Yellow Waters tour
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As for crocs, the area is known to be inhabited by salties, but sightings are inconsistent.  Not on our tour though - we saw 4!  The largest was about 4.5m long (~14-15ft!), and was swimming only about 10 feet from our boat.  It was high enough in the water that we could see much of its ~2 ft wide body, including the tail being used like a rudder to guide it through the water.

We decided to check out the rock art at Nourlangie Rock, which was pretty much nothing less than disappointing.  Much of the rock art was less than 100 years old, which seemed to take some of the excitement out.  The hike was pretty nice, but in general the site was a bit of a let-down.  One funny note (see the attached photo).  The weirdest art was of a spirit that was known as vicious to women - he clubbed them to death using a yam!  Who comes up with this stuff?