Kakadu National Park

Emma and Zach at Nourlangie Rock at the ancient cave drawings.

Yellow Water Cruise where the crocodiles swam with us or after us, not sure which!!!

View of Twin Falls from plane in Kakadu National Park.

Our flight let us view all the beautiful waterfalls not accessible by road during the wet season.

Posing with the didgeridoos!

The second part of our trip was spent in Kakadu National Park which was a 3 hour drive from Darwin. We had so much fun renting a car and driving it ourselves!!! It wasn't too hard to get used to driving on the left side of the road. Farid only turned out into the wrong lane one time and the honking horns told us pretty quickly to scoot over :) Kakadu is magnificent! It's 8,000 square miles, remote, and full of crocodiles, exotic birds, kangaroos and waterfalls! It was where the movie "Crocodile Dundee" was filmed and we got a sense of the real outback. Everyone warned us about the heat there but compared to India, it was not a problem! We hiked to several important sites, including aboriginal cave paintings up to 20,000 years old! Worse than the heat was the flies but after our first outing we sprayed ourselves down and used small twigs to constantly swat the flies! I told the kids if the hikes were easy, we wouldn't be in the outback. We had alot of fun. Because it was the end of the wet season, we could not access the waterfalls, which really are the highlight of the park so we booked a one hour flight over all the waterfalls. The pictures speak for themselves! Most of the pools were closed due to crocodile sightings. We also took a Yellow River boat cruise where we saw saltwater crocodiles just like you see on The Crocodile Hunter swimming through the water. The hotel we stayed in was the Holiday Inn which is actually shaped like and looks like a crocodile from the outside. The rooms and food were okay but since it was the best one in the park and nothing for 3 hours out, we didn't have a choice. However, the staff was very friendly and helpful planning our itinerary. We spent 3 days there and would thoroughly recommend that trip to anyone. On the way back to Darwin we took a Jumpin' Croc Cruise where they take you out on boats and hold out bait to the crocs who jump up out of the water to get it. The funny thing about this place was that on our stopover in Singapore we had time to catch a movie, something we never do in India. The preview was for a movie called "Rogue" a sort of action/thriller about a croc jumping tour that is terrorized by a rogue crocodile - think "Anaconda"! Farid leans over and says that's not the tour we're doing, is it? Then when we show up for our actual cruise, there's a signed movie poster thanking the owner of this place for all his help making the movie so realistic! I asked him if anything similar to that had actually ever happened and he said in his Steve Irwin voice with a very serious voice, "Actually, those of us in this business were amazed at how frightenly accurate the movie is." Think he was plugging the movie??? Anyway, we survived the croc cruise and if you happen to see this movie, you'll see the area where we were!

http://www.roguecrocodile.com