Top End: Day 2

We spent today in Kakadu National Park, which, at 20,000 square km is approximately the same size as Israel, or nearly eight times bigger than Luxembourg, but only 0.2% of the total size of Australia.

Our first stop was Ubirr to admire and learn about the aboriginal rock art. You can tell that this man was considered a powerful hunter because of his very big penis:

On the climb up Ubirr:

From the top of Ubirr there are stunning 360 degree views of the park. It was breath-takingly beautiful. I'm getting a little bored of how often I'm saying that on this blog! But I can't help it. I really have been seeing extraordinarily stunning sights on my travels:

What that photo throughly fails to capture is the sense of vastness and expansiveness. What made being up there so wonderful was that we could probably see 100km in every direction and yet there was almost no inkling of human impact on the park.

I explained yesterday how I was on the wrong tour. In fact, of the thirteen of us, there were five who had ended up in that position (quite what that says about the organisation of the company we'll just mention in passing). The other eight were all game for upping the active and Marcus, true to his word, obliged. That afternoon, for example, he took us to climb a big rock in the Nourlangie area of the park, with views to rival that from Ubirr, but far quieter because of the relative difficulty of getting up there. The sense of vastness was even more impressive here.

By the end of the day it was obvious that we had a really great group. Everyone got on well and there was a general atmosphere of hilarity and can-do spirit that was to last the whole trip. I've been on plenty of tours and this one was definitely the best in terms of the group dynamics, made even better by our fabulous guide, Marcus. I was thoroughly glad I'd ended up on the wrong tour. In fact, I was in such good spirits that even the following episode seemed hilarious:

The previous night I'd slept badly because the 'beds' in the permanent tent that Caroline (the woman I got on particularly well with) and I had shared were essentially just planks of wood, but I figured that there was an element of roughing it when camping and left it at that. When we got to the campsite on the second night there were a similar range of permanent tents. Caroline and I looked inside and noted to each other our delight at finding camping matresses in this one. Marcus overheard. 'What, you didn't have matresses last night?' he asked, incredulously. We were, of course, supposed to. Meanwhile, Rob and Paul revealed they had had two each. Marcus declared that I'm 'definitely not a whinging Pom'. I think it's one of the best compliments I've ever had!