Beach Pool & Plunge Pool Walk,
this is where I started to kind of understand the age limit for the trip, remember, over 40 not welcome.
Not tough yet
Features: Follow Jim Jim Creek through monsoon forest to beach pool and plunge pool at the base of dramatic escarpment walls. (personal comment: It’s not the walls that are dramatic, it’s the ground on which you walk)
The easy part, on the difficult stretches I didn’t take pictures, I had to hold on to something all the time.
Distance: 2 km return (personal comment: practically a stone’s throw)
?Did I mention, we all had to indicate a next of kin to get notified just in case …
I never understood how crocs could be in the river but then not in the pool (maybe we were just lucky). Behind the sign, Pandanus Spiralis, screw pine or screw palm, looks like a giant pineapple
Duration: Allow 3 hours (personal comment: this is how long it would take you if you were in your < forties, in good shape, wearing hiking boots, born and raised in Austria (no kangaroos in A!), had spent all the week ends of your life hiking in the mountains …)
This young Austrian (see comment above) carried my bag on the way back, oh thaaaank youuuuu !!!!!
Grade: Moderately difficult, involves scrambling over boulders, which can be slippery. (personal comment: define mo-de-rate)
moderately difficult, if you can take your time
And finally you get there
Jim Jim Falls: white beach, beach pool and behind the big rock, center right, the plunge pool, in the back the Falls
On the beach: go down on your knees, worship nature, thank your kneecap, your cruciate ligament, your meniscus that you made it, change into your swim suit and go. The beach pool is cold (our guide says “fresh”, I stick to cold until …), swim to the rock barrier that separates the beach pool from the plunge pool, climb over the slippery rocks, dip into the plunge pool (now THAT IS cold), swim, concentrate on breathing, think of people who go swimming in Lake Baikal (that’s on the other side of the earth), keep breathing, control your heart-beat, make sure it doesn’t stop, move slowly but move, in the end, sit under the waterfall and enjoy the co-ho-ho-oldest water coming down on your head and shoulders. Then swim back.
This is something you’ll do up to the age of 62, at the age of 63 you probably won’t.
bye bye Jim Jim Falls
fruit of the screw pine (see comment above)
On our way back we stopped at a roadside souvenir shop. You could buy didgeridoos and other colourful handcraft and works of art there.
In the first picture you see a didgeridoo split in half and learn how to distinguish the real thing from the fabricated one. The real one was caved out by termites and is very irregular inside. That’s the way it has to be to make that wonderful, weird sound. Kids start learning with simple bamboo instruments to get practice in circular breathing.
Next letter: travelling from Darwin to Alice Springs by Greyhound and getting lost right at the Tropic of Capricorn
cheers Gerburg
gerburgkamm 
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