Northern Territory - Back to Darwin

We got what was the earliest start of our whole holiday on our last day. By early I mean we were up by 8:00am. There has been a lot of sleeping in this holiday! Even Tyler wasn't moving around most days until close to 9.

We were driving back to Darwin this day and wanted to make a stop along the way at the Adelaide River to catch a jumping croc cruise.

We were a bit early for our cruise time so we took in the scenery and enjoyed a cuppa in the shade while we waited.

We got on our little boat and Tyler was loving the wind in his hair. This kid cracks me up!

So this area of Australia has the highest concentration of saltwater crocs. The tours run regularly and the people who run them are determined to protect the crocs habitat. There are hundreds of them in the river and they keep track of all of them as best as they can. The pork chops they hang out to feed them on tour by no means provide a stable diet. Different crocs could be fed each day and a 5 metre croc obviously needs more than a pork chop to get by.

So we hang out a chop...and here comes company! They are so quiet and fast it's incredible.

While that first guy was hanging around the left side of the boat, this one quietly snuck up on the right. Surprise! 

We were pretty excited, he was a huge 5 metre long croc and he was hungry! The skipper dangled the chop and convinced him to jump. I was so excited to get a picture of the huge lizard that I didn't realise until later that he was an amputee! Seriously, hundreds of crocs and ours doesn't have any legs lol.  A lot of the bigger crocs are missing their front legs from the territory battles that they get themselves into. I assume having no front legs means this guy hasn't been so successful in the past. 

From here it was a short hours drive into Darwin, we checked in to our hotel and headed back out into the city.

The theme of the day was crocodiles and sticking with it we popped in to visit Crocosaurus Cove.

There were fish, reptiles and of course some massive crocs that are all rescues from various parts of the country. Most of them are over 40 years old and are here because they weren't playing nice with the other crocs wherever they were before.

We finished up our day with dinner out on a patio, our waitress was conveniently from Ottawa, Hillcrest High School in fact!  And then it was time to be back at the hotel for our last night in Darwin.

Our flight didn't leave until early afternoon the next day, so not wanting to admit we would soon be back in Ferntree Gully in the cold, we took advantage of a few more hours in the sunshine trying to soak up the warmth and humidity before heading home.

We had a great holiday, I can't say enough about the things we saw and the places we visited, it was unbelievable. It's definitely in our top 3.