Drive to Litchfield

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Geo: -13.2891, 130.837

Today is Debs birthday so we ordered room service breakfast, her favorite thing to do when we are on holidays. I went out shopping to get a birthday card some flowers, a foam esky and some ice.

Deb is busting to get a hair cut and makes an appointment and has the biggest smile on her face when she gets a cut she really likes. We head up to Europcar to pick up our hire car and the heat is already punishing at 10.00 am. We scored well getting a brand new Mitsubishi ASX and headed to a bottle-shop and to Subway to get some supplies for our trip to Litchfield National Park. We head back to the hotel to pick up our swimmers and some towels and we are off.

Its a two hour drive to Batchelor the gateway to the park then another 20 m into the first of the attractions on a circular route. Our first stop is a roadside stop at the Magnetic Termite Mounds and let us tell you that this is less than impressive with a recent burn-off turning everything black, a construction crew shutting of access to the biggest of the mounds and a viewing platform that only offers a distant glimpse of 100 - 200 mounds all facing north. Why are they facing north, who knows not even Google can tell me.

Deb is starting to get cranky as the mercury climbed to 35 degrees and this is not how she wanted to spend her birthday so we crack a cold beer from the esky and head to Florence Falls in the hope of a dip in the lagoon and a picnic under the shady rain forest.

On arriving at Florence Falls a 30 km detour, the car park is overflowing with tourists and day trippers. We consider the 3.2 km walk to get there but you guessed it Deb refused to do the walk and I couldn't really blame her. We get back in the car and Deb rings a tour company to confirm our booking on a sunset cruise around the harbor and this seals the fate for the rest of the sights at Litchfield as we have only 30 m up our sleeve before we have to return to Darwin.

We decide to drop into the Buley Hole for a swim but once again the car park is crowded and on walking to the rock pools there is not even a spot left to sit down (the place is as crowed as Bondi Beach on a Sunday).We jump back into the cool air conditioned car and crack some more cold beers and return to the Stuart Highway.

On getting back to Darwin we shower and change for our cruise and catch a cab to Stokes Hill Wharf where we board a massive cat for our sunset cruise and smorgasbord. This is one cruise I was not looking forward to but it ended up being very pleasant and good value for money.

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