Escape To Litchfield

This is possibly the most questionable tour I’ve ever been on in terms of safety. In hindsight it was more like the death and crime tour around Darwin and it’s surrounding areas, as we saw a lot of sights where crimes happened or people got eaten by crocodiles. The tour was called Litchfield Escapes, which funny enough, immediately reminded me of Litchfield Prison from the Netflix series, Orange Is The New Black. But despite sharing a name with a famous prison and all the death, crime and danger, this was actually a nature and swimming tour.

A small bus picked us up at 6am at our Darwin hotel. We weren’t driving long before we got our first taste of crime and death on the tour; a crime spree, that ended in a car jacking accident, closed off every major road in Darwin. We drove in circles for over an hour, with no way to get to our destination until a fed up driver moved the roadblocks. As a result, we were about an hour late to our first stop, The Jumping Croc Tour. This boat tour was incredible and incredibly dangerous. We watched large wild crocs appear out of thin air to jump up for food, inches away from us. And of course, the boat took us around to see spots where people had been eaten by crocodiles within the last year.

After the Jumping Croc tour, we went to Litchfield National Park. The tour took us to swim in 3 natural waterfalls. The first waterfall was Wangi Falls. After watching the crocodiles powerfully attack their food on the Jumping Croc Tour, very few people wanted to swim in this first area which was so deep that you couldn’t see the bottom. My Mom and I weren’t about to miss out though, and swam out to the waterfalls, making sure we stayed near the tastier looking people. Although the tour advertised safe and croc free swimming areas, we noticed this crocodile warning sign after we got out of the water…

Wangi Falls

We were warned not to bring any food off of the bus because giant lizards would sneak into our bags and bite our fingers off  (seriously), so we were really happy when we got to have a giant and delicious picnic lunch.

Next, we were brought to Florence Falls where we were warned to be careful because a tourist had recently drowned (This seriously was the death and crime tour). We all swam here as the water was crystal clear, although still really deep, but at least you would probably see the crocodile coming for you. The falls were amazing to swim out to and we swam with hundreds of giant fish.

Florence Falls

Finally, we went to Buley Rock Hole, where we laid in some small waterfalls. This was also slightly dangerous because the rocks were slippery, and people were falling all around us, but it felt like a spa and it was a great way to cool off in the Darwin heat.

Buley Rock Hole

Because we were in traffic so long at the start of the day, we didn’t really get to explore the giant termite mounds, which were at the top of my Darwin bucket list. However, we did get to stop and take a quick picture and touch the giant mounds (I actually don’t think we were supposed to touch it, but I did). These mounds were over 100 years old!

Giant Termite Hills

After a long day, we tiredly made our way home, but not before hearing about more crime and death around Darwin from our tour guide! I think Darwin is kind of famous for having crazy crimes and deaths. There’s even a whole book dedicated to the craziest Darwin newspaper headlines. But despite that, this tour was really great value and probably one of the most exciting and unique tours I’ve been on to date. If you’re looking for an adventurous day trip from Darwin, I highly recommend going with Litchfield Escapes.