Litchfield Park!

After finishing up with our Croc Cruise, we continued on our tour to Litchfield Park, about 130km south of Darwin. (The rest of the pics in this post are from within the park.)

Massive termite mound. Thousands of termites work together for decades to build mounds like this. They gather up nearby sand, mix it with their saliva and just keep building upwards. The finished product is hard as cement (or at least seems that way to the touch) and is impervious to rain, etc. This particular style is called a "cathedral mound." (Sorta looks like a cathedral Antoni Gaudi might design, no?)

Another view of the termite mound.

Christine and me in front of the cathedral mound, so you can get a sense of scale.

This sort of looks like a graveyard, but it's really a huge number of magnetic termite mounds, all perfectly aligned towards magnetic north. (No one knows how the termites are able to do this.)

Wangi Falls. Gorgeous, but closed for swimming on account of the crocs.

Florence Falls. Open for swimming, but required quite a trek down into the gorge.

Here I am swimming at Florence Falls. I'm not skippy dipping, I swear! My swimsuit (or bathers, as they call them here) just didn't make it into the picture frame...

Christine at Florence Falls

My foot. I can't believe I'm sharing this, but... I've pretty much inherited my mother's extremely delicate Irish skin, which means that I'm doing constant battle with eczema, psoriasis, rosacea, etc. (Thanks, Mom!) And oftentimes, when I'm subjected to a sudden and extreme change in temperature or humidity, my skin peels a little bit. Just a little. Sometimes on my foot. A tiny bit. Maybe you can see in this photo. Anywhoosie, the point of the story is that I stepped into the water near Florence Falls, where a bunch of other folks all seemed to be blissfully enjoying a refreshing dip, and within seconds, I felt a bite on my foot. Then another. Then another. I tried everything: shrieking like a schoolgirl, flapping my hands around in the water like a schoolgirl, batting my eyes coquettishly at all the handsome, well-built Aussie studs nearby like a schoolgirl. Nothing would make the incessant biting stop. I was then informed by our helpful tourguide that the checkered rainbowfish had taken a liking to me, and that I probably had a bit of dry skin on my feet. How mortifyingly embarrassing! Apparently, these little fish make it their life's work to groom other fish by biting off dead skin, etc. They get a meal and the other fish gets cleaned. Everyone's happy. Apparently, they saw me enter the water and summoned the troops for a massive concerted effort at cleaning me up. I was really touched by their effort, but it still totally freaked me out -- I didn't stay in the water at Florence Falls very long.