Fat Albert, the croc

So there I was.... minding my own business, relaxing after a long day of trekking in the jungle in the river. Ahh.... peace and quiet. THEN, all of a sudden, this MONSTER crocodile appears!! What the?!?! It came out of nowhere, but from the look of it, it was ready to ATTACK! What to do? I had a flashback to crocodile dundee, and in a flash of a second, I climbed on top of it while it was fighting with me. Thrashing all over the place, I finally pulled myself in front and with all of my body weight, managed to clamp its mouth shut. THEN.....

Okay, okay, so that really didn't happen. What REALLY happened that we just spent the last 2 days in the rainforest and we went on a river cruise, a croc cruise, if you will, and lo and behold, we come across Fat Albert, this HUGE crocodile. It was just hanging out, catching some rays. We learn that it is 20 years old (they live up to 60+), is 5.5m long, and weighs about 1.2 TONS! TONS!!! It was soooooo amazing to see in vivo... it was HUGE!!! It definitely is a Fat Albert!!! I took, of course, 20349823049832 pictures, but here is one:

So we ended up getting a hostel, pretty much right in the middle of the jungle and went on a night rainforest tour with headlamps and everything. So then we came across pythons, spiders, birds, and some amazing other creatures. I'm not going to lie, during the 3 hours we were hiking in the pitch black I was a little paranoid and kept on imagining what I would do if a snake or spider landed on my foot (I was wearing open shoes). I didn't have any great solutions, but thankfully nothing happened. It was then amazing to sleep at night (how did I sleep after all that adventure that day, I don't know) and listen to the wind blowing the trees, and these odd (but cool) animal/bird sounds.

Then today we did another muddy rainforest hike and by the way, I am learning sooooooooooooooooooooo much about the life of a rainforest, and I am just getting more and more amazed by agriculture. We also went on an exotic fruit tour and tasted some amazing, and unique to Australia, fruit. The drive up to where we where (which, if you look at a map is at the far tip of the north-east corner of Australia), was up through the mountains, ZIG-ZAG (very sharp and very scary. Mind you, again, I'm driving on the right hand side, on the left side of the road, with the manual on the left). BUT I can't even describe to you how beautiful it is seeing the ocean, HEARING the ocean and the waves crash, and seeing this lush rainforest surrounding it amongst mountains. I've never seen or experienced anything like it!!!!

Its been a tiring last few days, lots o action, but the next 2 days we are doing a live-abroad (you sleep on the boat) on the Great Barrier Reef!