The Kimberleys 2

Saturday we started with the Manning gorge. Which ment that we had to swim at 7.00 in the morning to the starting point of the walk. Fortunately the water was not the coldest ever....

 After a walk of about 50 minutes we arrived at our next swimming destination: a beautiful pool with again a very nice waterfall. I really enjoy these combinations of walking/climbing and relaxed swimming in ever so gorgeous gorges..... We saw some turtles and lizards, and we had a very relaxing time before heading back...

That is the only disadvantage from gorges: the way in is normally also the way out, so you always walk the same way twice...not too much of a problem if it is either beautiful, or you are bussy rock climbing :) During lunch Hanneke and i did some dancing, and we made the entire group listen to some lindyhop music, as it is not very often you are in the Manning gorge, the ambasadour of lindyhop :) 

After lunch we made our way to el Questro, a camping side with the most expensive camping places ever...they start with 37,- for a normal stand place up to 2000,- a night for a cabin in the gorges, all inclusive...but still...

The good thngs about El Questro is that it was the firts place with some facillities: you could do the laundry, buy an ice cream, and their was a bar where a real cowboy played some cowboy music. dancing to it is pretty easy: you simply jump up and down :) I got most of my fellow travellers involved, even 64 year old Michaels, who had not danced for more than 10 years. Do you know why the mushroom went to the party? Because he was a fungi..... Do you know why he soon left ? Because there was not mushroom....

El Questro apparently doesn't mean anything: the people that set it up, likied the sound of it :)

The following day we again went for some walking, but this day was the most serious one....although it started off quite pleasant: we left at 6.30 to go to the spring wells: some 38 degree natural springs in the middle of some palm tree landscape :) 

After that we explored Emma gorge, a 2 hour wlak return to the highest waterfall so far. There were some Cane frogs: Frogs white man brought to Austrlia to get rid of the bugs that destroyed their sugar cane.... however, the bugs were to high for the frogs to eat, and the frogs appeared to be poisoness for all anymalls that ate them, which were quite a few as the look nicely fat and juicy......So the frogs are spreading al around Australia now, are extremely hard to destroy and poison all the natural wild life, a great disaster in Australian history.....

The afternoon walk was the most challenging so far.... it started with an hour of reasonable do-able walking with some rocks and palms and beautiful creeks.... Midway through we lost half of the group at the halfway springs, as that second bit of the walk was quite difficult: It started with swimming to a gigantic rock, and a hard way up that rock.... 

we needed some help with that, but that start made a natural selection for the rest of the walk: another hour of climbing on and of quite challenging rocks, some a little more scary than I am used too. However, it was all fun and beautiful, and it ended in a little piece of pardise: A small pretty  lake, surounded by a more tropical kind of vegetation. 

The way back was as challanging, or even a little more as after 4 hours of walking I started to be a bit more tired....so after 6 hours of walking, I was quite glad to reach the bus....So after some cowboy jumping at night, I was quite pleased to fall asleep :)