Let's go off-road!

Monday, September 24, 2018

Now it's really starting. The wilderness is calling!

On the way to El Questro National Park, I adjusted the tire pressure to protect the tires. In addition, driving on gravel and gravel is now more pleasant and hopefully we won't see a tar road next week anymore 😃.

Several baobab trees line our path, some of them huge and certainly hundreds of years old.

This tree is also called the Tree of Life in Africa and was once used as a prison in Australia!

The nature is breathtakingly beautiful and above all completely intact. Very few people cross our path during the day and houses or other human settlements are hardly visible. Lots of bumpy roads, gravel, sand, white sand, yellow sand and above all red sand!

The sun now sets at 5:30 p.m. and we adjust our rhythm quite to the sun. That means going to bed around 8:00 p.m. but getting up at 6:00 a.m. (at the latest).

The day begins with bird twittering that couldn't be more absurd. Every bird screams its melody or croak in sometimes deafening volume! The most ugly sounding are the beautiful parrots that usually fly in groups of 5-10 animals. The noise is similar to a teenager decorating the floor with his gall after a nasty party night...😬 But I'm still completely fascinated because parrots are just flying around here, isn't that great!! 😃

So far, we have been camping at "normal" campsites, as Gianna is not quite comfortable otherwise. For example, we had to leave a beautiful place because there was a huge bull next to an even larger baobab tree 🐂!

The thing with the cattle is quite something.

Before each hike, there are info boards with warnings about how long the hike takes, how much water to take, and of course, the dangers that await. Then there's always snakes, spiders, and cattle. Since I never knew what cattle meant, it wasn't a problem, but suddenly there were 2 bulls strutting around at the last campsite.

In Australia, all the animals live on huge farms, which means they are actually completely free. At the end of the season, they are driven together into huge herds using jeeps and helicopters and then slaughtered.

Currently, we are driving through the Kimberleys, a region that does a lot of cattle farming and accordingly, there are many animals to see. However, so far we have only seen bulls (easy to recognize) and they are big and very well-horned!

Because I wanted to get a little closer to a bull on the campsite (within 5 meters), it came running snorting at me and I had to make use of my rusty sprinting skills! 😎

The government's sermon came right after that and this time I have to reluctantly admit that they are right 😬. With me, it usually takes the hard way!

The Swiss cows are used to people, but these animals here are actually wild and I didn't consider that!

The last few days flew by as there wasn't much to see on the way. But it's never boring because we have to cross mostly dried-up rivers everywhere. Every now and then there is a bit of water and Gianna likes to wait in the scorching heat to take a nice photo 😉.

Despite the heat, she managed to catch a cold! Whether it's because of the air conditioning or the rather cool nights is a mystery. After 2 days of an easy program, she now has no more excuses for my planned hikes and swimming sessions! 😈

I didn't want to participate in one of those German bathing orgies (there are only Germans, Swiss, Australians, and a few French people out there!!) because we are here to encounter as few people as possible, not 700 speaking the same language! The many leeches in the water didn't really attract me either...I'm writing in first person because Gianna only wants to swim at very carefully selected bathing spots 😜!

We meet our 3 German colleagues every evening, who always choose the same campsite as us. We thoroughly enjoy watching every step of the well-equipped tourists! Safari hat, safari shirt, long pants, and of course, everything in earth tones. I don't want to blame the Germans for that because the Swiss we see also usually swim with a sun hat, sunglasses, and a t-shirt to avoid getting tanned.

The complete opposite are the Australians, who also like to go hiking in gorges with children, flip-flops, and without water! Idiots par excellence...

Otherwise, Australians are super nice and very helpful. Above all, the Aussies are a very practical example to see if a body of water is crocodile safe 🐊. Usually, everything is fine when Australians swim.

It could also be that only freshwater crocodiles are swimming there (the "small" ones are only about 3m) because that's not a big deal for the locals...Last time they also said, oh you can swim there, there are definitely no dangerous ones in there, maybe a few small freshies.. Cool, I really like crocodiles, but I don't want to swim with any of them 😅🐊!!