Crocodile Cruisin’

It wouldn’t be a trip to Australia without crocodiles.

After Port Douglas, we stopped for a couple of days in Daintree Village. There’s a beautiful campground there near the river.

Doing some evening yoga at our campsite:

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Our camping set up… we would form a little circle with the cars and tents, with our picnic rugs in the middle:

The campground had a gorgeous view overlooking the river below. You don’t want to get too close to that water, though, because crikey…. it’s full of crocs!

Crocodiles are one of those animals that are fun to see – from a distance. From the village, there were crocodile tours leaving almost every hour. We found out that if you paid for one tour, you could use the ticket to go on as many trips as you wanted (with the same company) for the next week. We took full advantage and went three different times: one midday, one early morning, one early evening.

Cruising along:

On the first tour, we saw a crocodile within the first minute:

The crocodile sightings continued:

One surprise of the tours was that they weren’t strictly about crocodiles – the guide also pointed out lots of bird life for us! (I was very happy).

Some beautiful cows, overlooking the river:

The only sad part of our time there came the last night, when we had to say goodbye to Olivia. It had been nearly two months since I picked her up from the airport in Brisbane, after meeting via Facebook and briefly messaging; she, Estef, and I had so many adventures camping (sometimes in odd locations), discovering places across Australia, and driving well over a thousand kilometres together. Olivia’s time in Australia had come to an end – she had to fly back to Germany to begin university.

It was a sad goodbye… although we did have fun ‘auctioning’ off some of her stuff a couple of nights before she left. She distributed among us all of the things she wouldn’t need back in Germany (such as her snorkel equipment and camping gear). I scored a sweet hat!