Tennant Creek to Kakadu National Park

Nos despedimos de Tennant Creek con destino final Kakadu (Parque Nacional, el cual es famoso por albergar cocodrilos salt water... Esos que pueden llegar a medir hasta 7 mts, y son los peligrosos. Antes pararíamos en unas piscinas naturales y en parque nacional Nitmiluk para dormir una noche. En el camino a las Bitter spring, al lado de la carretera, estaban quemando árboles en el bosque, lo que produjo que algunos animales se movieran y cruzaran la ruta por lo que vimos un dingo y una culebra. 

Paramos en una estación de servicio, y en la salida alguien estaba "haciendo dedo" un viajero que necesitaba llegar a Darwin (500 km más allá). Su nombre es Naoto, de nacionalidad japonesa, que se trepó a nuestro auto cuando le ofrecimos llevarlo hasta el siguiente camping 100 km de distancia. A la mañana siguiente, Naoto estaba otra ves parado en la ruta fuera de nuestro camping, por lo que lo invitamos a tomar café con nosotros y continuar hacia las piscinas cristalinas, nuestro nuevo amigo, feliz acepto toda oferta. 

And off we went from Tennant Creek, but not before visiting the local art centre, and why did we...reducing little by little our stuff, selling and donating things, a firm promise not to buy anything unnecessary....but an authentic aboriginal painting would be nice in our next loft wouldn't it, and so a painting was added to the collection. Then northbound, mile by mile making our way to the equator. A 700 km drive to Kakadu National Park, which we choose instead of Uluru awaited us. Being myself an occasional hitchhiker, I always promised to take other hitchhikers when I could, but in New Zealand, full of hitchhikers, we only had a 2-seater, so when we saw somebody next to the road, we loaded him in our outback mobile. Naoto, Japanese born but global citizen was heading for Darwin. When we asked how hitching in Australia was, he said he had waited 15 minutes to get a lift from Uluru to Alice, 2 days to get out of Alice and now, 5 PM, had been waiting for 7 hours. Nevertheless, it was a pleasure seeing the relaxing attitude of Naoto towards his waiting times and he would finally join us for the next 2 days of our travels, proving to be an excellent travel companion.

Llegamos a las piscinas naturales "Bitter spring" donde además de tener agua totalmente cristalina era caliente... (Maravillosa combinación). Estuvimos ahí los 3 nadando como patos, y después hicimos un picnic antes de ir hacia Nitmiluk National Park. 

Saliendo de las Bitter Spring, nos dirigimos al Parque Nacional Nitmiluk, donde acamparíamos, y nuestro amigo Naoto, al que adoptamos ese día... También decidió quedarse con nosotros en el camping. Llegamos al parque, instalamos carpas y nos fuimos a dar una caminata entre bosque seco... Ascendiendo a unas cascadas que formaban una piscina. Muertos de calor decidimos refrescarnos en la piscina, que además como ya había atardecido (5pm) no había gente, así que teníamos la piscina para nosotros solos. El lugar espectacular... Esa piedra rojiza que forman los muros altos y rodean las piscinas es increíble. Después regresamos a nuestro camping, cenamos juntos, compartimos unas cervezas, conversamos hasta el anochecer. 

From where we picked up Naoto, we saw a smoke plume, and after 15 minutes we noticed it was a roadside bushfire. Firstly, a bit of smoke, then denser and denser with flames alongside the road and the heat radiating into the car. I turned on the headlights but to no avail, as it appears we were driving into Inferno and I felt a slight panic bubbling up, I saw tires melting, windows bursting, the car breaking down and headlines of 3 international tourists in a tragic forest fire. I was about to try and make a 180, and then saw a car coming out of the smoke. I then decided to continue and all of a sudden we where out of the smoke and there was a ranger lighting the grass with a big torch. Controlled preventive burning. Controlled, everything controlled, except for the psychological state of unaware and inexperienced tourists. A warning sign, usually everywhere, would have been handy.

After camping in the Pink Panther, we headed for Bitter Springs, a piece of river in the forest with blue turquoise crystalline Luke warm but refreshing water, and we floated down the river a few times to get the dust off. While on our way south, the campsite at Edith falls was full, we decided to try our luck again and the 3 of us enjoyed a few icy beers and then a dip in the red rock surrounded pools watching the sunset. The next day we dropped Naoto off to continue his travels and we turned into the Kakadu National park, a Unesco heritage area, by many described as not to be missed but also sometimes as overstated and overpriced, we had to decide ourselves. 

Después de Nitmiluk, nos dirigimos a Kakadu National Park, nos despedimos de nuestro amigo Naoto, al que dejamos con pena en la carretera, donde esperaría otro auto que lo quiera llevar a Darwin, no logramos convencerlo de que nos acompañe a Kakadu, pero nos despedimos con mucho gusto de habernos conocido e intercambiado historias sobre viajes y costumbres de cada país. Llegamos a Kakadu, otra vez los 35 grados hasta el anochecer. 

Hicimos varias caminatas alrededor de billabongs, la cantidad de fauna silvestre era increíble, y los atardeceres maravillosos sobre el río. Vimos aves, caballos salvajes, garzas, chancho salvaje, un tipo de rata, vacas salvajes, y si, finalmente vimos dos cocodrilos salt water, de los grandes, mientras hacíamos una de las caminatas alrededor de un billabong. Ahí estaba en una isla de tierra en medio del billabong, descansando bajo el sol. 

Kakadu is enormous and driving through the park, from site to site, would take us several 100s of kilometers. I knew Billabong only from flip flops and boardhorts, but on the first day we visited one of the more famous billabongs in the park. The Kakadu park exists of vast areas of floodplain a, flooding during the wet season and then little by little drying up again. When drying, some the water retreats until some big pools, or billabongs, are left. This is where the water and the life is, water birds and migrating birds by the thousand, introduced but wild animals such as horses, pigs and buffalos and of course the crocs, some sections covered by thousands of water lilies. My first encounter in the evening light was just jaw dropping, some of these moments you get goosebumps by the sheer beauty of nature. Despite all the people, we found deserted camping spots with small fire pits surrounded by the bush and the second night surrounded by gazillions of persistent mosquitoes.

En el parque Nacional ofrecían actividades gratis, guiadas por un Ranger del parque. Cada uno eligió una actividad: Johan eligió una caminata a través del bosque hasta llegar a un área donde habían pinturas aborígenes en rocas, y yo elegí tomar una charla / conversación sobre los cocodrilos. Ambas actividades muy interesantes, las pinturas en rocas eran hechas con materiales de otras piedras, y a través de las pinturas se iba pasando conocimiento de generación en generación entre la gente de una tribu. Historias y enseñanza sobre caza, leyendas de espíritus, enseñanza de pesca, avistamiento de primeros europeos en Australia, eran algunas de las interpretaciones de estas pinturas en roca. 

Culebra escondida entre las rocas: (café con blanco) 

One of the things that I like about national parks in developed countries, such as the US, New Zealand and Australia, is the role the park management takes not only in equipping and maintaining the park but also in education and research. As visitors of the park, we were invited in an array of activities all day long and in different areas of the park, from guided walks, to talks and workshops. The first one we took part in was a guided walk to some aboriginal rock paintings. Kakadu is famous for having the longest, continuous manifestation of art and the park counts with over 5000 art sites. Apart from the beauty of the paintings, which is subjective, it is an incredible mechanism of transferring knowledge about water, food, spiritual issues and tribal laws. What we as westerners (in my texts I often refer to westerners, first world, developing countries, etc which are gross generalizations and not very accurate at the same encompassing and excluding terms, not always correct and politically correct, but I use them for the ease of writing and describing without intention to offend, in any case my apologies) sometimes do not understand is that the art, in this case aboriginal, is not about the result but about the process.

One example is the so called X-Ray painting of fishes and animals showing their internal structure. A party consisting of elders, including the teachers of the knowledge as well as the managers of the knowledge, and people regarded as ready to receive the knowledge would set out. Then stories would be told while the fish was being painted, indicating organs to be removed, precious reserves of fat, bones. In the end a fish would remain on the rock, but more importantly, some young boys would have received the knowledge of how to handle fish, taught by their teachers and controlled by the managers of the knowledge to guarantee correctness in the transition. You could compare the painting as what remains on the blackboard after a class.

Only some sites are open to the public, because only some are considered to be public knowledge, accessible to all, while others have different levels of access, based on gender, experience and role in society. The paintings also prove useful archeological tools, because of layers of paintings and associated dates, researches can now trace certain events in time and their impact on humans, such as Australian megafauna and their extinction, the ice age and climate change, arrival of traders from the Indonesian archipelago and the later arrival of the Europeans. This was again a fascinating experience into aboriginal culture, brought to live by a park ranger, who humbly accepts the basic teachings of aboriginal tribes of the area. According to him, a teaching is not "ok let's sit down you and me, chat a bit and draw on paper" if not a long process of permissions and invitations, a bus load of people, many hours of hiking through the bush, all the time accompanied by teachings. What to us might seem tedious, is in fact a mechanism to ensure knowledge is transferred throughout generations for thousands of years while trying to protect from the Chinese Whisper effect. The same guide gave us an interesting talk on the crocs and the only, but most imminent question I asked, was if crocs would also hunt on land or always from the water. When the talk finished we returned to our tent, in an official campsite, 50m from a croc inhabited billabong.

Después de tantas caminatas bajo el sol, con 35 grados de calor, temperatura seca, caminando entre bosque con el riesgo de pisar una culebra o tener un encuentro con algún animal peligroso, perseguidos por zancudos sanguinarios que no se conformaban con picarte una vez (y por lo menos a mí, una vez que me pican me dejan ronchas gigantes, rojizas y la piel se me pone como afiebrada), haber dormido en carpas en medio del bosque, rodeados de billabong donde habitaban cocodrilos, tuve mi ascenso en la escala de"Treking y aventura"  y fui promovida de Intermedio a "Avanzado". Quedan dos rangos más por alcanzar, según la escala nominada por Johan... Después del avanzado viene el "experto" y después de experto... Viene el "MASTER" que ya es lo máximo que podría alcanzar y que es la posición que Johan mismo se ha denominado. En lo que yo llevo la batuta y soy la MASTER, es en avistamiento de animales, detecto animales a lo lejos aunque estén camuflados entre plantas o sombras, no se me escapa ni una! 

As stated previously, we have our scales for skills levels in outdoor experience and Belen is quickly progressing through the ranks, reaching the intermediate level in our New Zealand hiking trips. On the other hand, we have several denominators to category hikes and experience, from relax or light to sauvage on the other hand of the spectrum, and obviously the latter one is a source of progress through the ranks. 15 km hikes, through stinking hot Australian Savannah and desert, swim with sweet water crocs, camp surrounded by billabong infested crocs, making fires to repel mosquitoes, having access not even to cold water shower but only to dust baths, I give Belen the credit she deserves, a promotion to the rank of Advanced on the IJHOES (International Johan Hawinkel Outdoor Experience Scale). On her side, she is a master in wildlife spotting and I am subject to make career under her supervision.

In this paragraph I wish to consult the public opinion on one of our experiences. A certain day in Kakadu, after getting up at the crack of dawn for an activity and afterwards taking a breakfast, we needed to brush our teeth. Because the bathrooms on one of the sites car parks didn't have water and you were not supposed to drop chemicals in the loo in order not to disturb biodegradation, we brushed our teeth on the car park, disposing of our organic toothpaste in a small hole in the dirt behind our car. Biodegradable, no visible traces left. While I was brushing my teeth, even not disposing of the white spume yet, an Australian parked next to me and asked if I would do this at home, which I told I would. She then told us of pretty badly. To make things worse, I heard here accusing me with some other people and telling them, "we should do this on one of their German villages". While as Belen says, my liver turned pate, I contained my anger and swallowed my pride, not the toothpaste. I was deeply offended, first because I don't see anything wrong in what I was doing, and second because we have tried to be extremely respectful with the nature (and people) that has hosted us, buying biodegradable shampoo, soap, detergent, by always carrying out all our trash of parks, by picking up other people's rubbish on hiking trails or beaches, etc. My nightmares and post traumatic stress syndrome are decreasing now but I would value your opinion to shed some light on my barbaric acts.

Y así llegamos al final de nuestra aventura por Australia, fue un mes bastante variado en el que tuvimos desde playa, ciudad moderna, museos, zoológicos, encuentros con amigos y familiares, caminatas alrededor de ríos y billabong, Kayak en un cañón con cocodrilos sweet water, avistamiento de fauna silvestre, acercamiento a la cultura de los aborígenes de Australia, llamados "the black people of Australia". Listos en el aeropuerto de Darwin para tomar ese avión que nos cruzara de continente y donde continuaremos con nuestra aventura empezando por Indonesia, país subdesarrollado con 220.000 millones de habitantes, con distintos dialectos, religiones, costumbres... El cambio al que nos enfrentaremos será drástico pero estamos ansiosos por poner los pies en Asia. 

To say Kakadu is unmissable, would be an understatement, the combination of wildlife, ecosystems and the aboriginal art sites is fabulous and we saw it in the best possible way, camping, hiking, waiting and sitting next to billabongs and viewpoints and through some ranger guided activities. Now back in the direction of Darwin, go through another reduction of our personal inventory and then on a plane. Leaving behind our own transport, cooking our own food, English language and scarcely populated country for a 300 million people archipelago, with new food, different languages and dialects and reliance on public or chartered transport. Indonesia, meet the Chiwawines.......