Jumping Crocodiles…

What can one say about “jumping crocodiles?”   I guess this also tells you how much we wanted to get off the ship and touch land again.  So early one morning we signed on to a shore trip to see “Jumping Crocodiles.”  Now, I have heard, read, talked about more crocodiles in Australia than I think is even sane.  But what one will do when it comes to desperation about getting off the boat, well, you’ll see…

"jumping" Croc

Aboriginee "Croc Baiter"

Second mouthfull!

Feed the Kites when the Crocs are full!

So, we are in Darwin Australia STILL and the captain feels badly that we have had to park in the marina for 2 days.  He has arranged for us to see these Jumpin’ Crocs.  Up at 0-dark-hundred, march on a bus, ride an hour out of town through brush, desert, well, you get the picture.  And, finally, we pull up at…sorry, not the crocs yet.  It is a wildlife house perched on a mountain in the middle of nowhere with pictures of all the deadly snakes, deadly spiders, termite mounds, and a place to buy ice cream.  I must admit that I was pretty impressed with the termite mound.  You see, as we drove along the desert, the trees we saw ALL had huge termite mounds next to them.  Termites here are not so afraid that they live in walls and floors.  They build their castles to the sky.

Then, you guessed it; back on the bus to Croc-ville.  We get to the river half an hour later and walk the plank to a rickety pontoon boat where they announce that you cannot move from side to side or the boat will tip over.  And, since the river is full of crocs, that would not be an edifying experience!  So off we go, with an aborigine girl with a fishing pole, beef short ribs hanging like a lure, bobbing it up and down to try to lure the crocs to come to the boat and then, she jerks up the food and they are supposed to jump out of the water while everyone says, “Oh, wow, hoha, etc”.  Only our crocs were old.  And tired.  They had already had two boatloads of tourists oh-ahing at them.  They really weren’t hungry.  But, due diligence, we got a few pictures of the crocs jumping. 

The part I found interesting was the dialogue, continuous as we cruised with our “fishing pole.”  One of the crocs only has 1 leg because they fight and bite each others’ legs off.  And one has only half a jaw, because he too had a fight.  So the survival rate of crocs must be really low, at least in that river.  Did the tourists like their adventure?? Well, from comments we heard, it was a highlight.  But then anything off the boat might have been a highlight that day!!

Mango orchard

Enough about crocs.  Now we are on our way to Indonesia, largest Muslim country in the world.  Next: KOMODO DRAGONS, poop and all.

More warning about dangerous Ausralia

Even More!!