Australia 2010: Darwin
It was Friday morning when we arrived to Darwin, the northern-most city of Australia. Sanna and Mervi (the two Finnish girls that we met in Cairns and who were traveling with us on the same plane) had their hostel on the same street as ours, and so we all took the shuttle from the airport to the hostels. We didn't know that it was going to by goodbye (or a least a see you later back in Finland) when we split to each of our hostels.
Arrival at Darwin
Darwin is a very humid and warm city. The temperature was about 35 Celsius degrees and the humidity reached 99% most of the days. It reminded me Mallorca, my beloved island where my parents live. The room in the hostel was quite big, although shared with two more people (who weren't there yet). Marc and I headed to the supermarket to buy some goods, since we had several days to stay at Darwin.
The shopping was great. The prices of the meat were really low, and we got two kilograms of T-bone for dinner for only $10 (which was less than 8€). We grilled the dinner by the hostel's pool and so we met several guys that were around our table (from Germany, France and U.K.). We decided, that night already, to go out and have a beer.
The beer wasn't just a beer. In Darwin there is only one main street, and all the pubs are there. Many pubs offered us a free drink for entering the place, and so we took advantage of that and started hopping from pub to pub, until we settle at one of them. We started ordering jags of beer and the night passed really quickly.
The next morning, Marc didn't want to do anything. I decided to go for a walk with a French guy we met the night before. Suddenly, before I got out of the hostel, I saw two nice-looking girls posting a note on the hostel's pinboard. I decided to say hello, just to be nice. But then, they told me that they were looking for two people to come with them to Litchfield (a national park near Darwin). Hence, I literally grabbed Marc and introduced them to him, and we told them that we would go with them to the park.
Everything went nicely, and I spent the morning with them looking for cars to hire and more information. In the evening, we talked to the people in the hostel and organized some meeting at the main park, to have drinks. Meanwhile, Marc and I went with the dutch girls (Iris and Mirjam) to have dinner to a restaurant where they had a free-dinner deal. Then, we all went to the park and had some drinks, but then was time to have a rest for the next day.
Litchfield
The next morning (on Sunday), the four of us went to the rental office (in front of our hostel) and picked the car, and so our trip to Litchfield began. We stopped at a gas station to buy some sandwiches and then we followed our map to visit the most interesting places around the park.
The first attraction were the giant termite mounds, right at the entrance of the Litchfield park. These termite mounds are known world-wide, they measure up to 7 meters and they are built magnetically. The orientation is north-south, which helps the termites to control the temperature inside the mound itself.
Afterwards, we had a swim at the Buley Rockhole, where there are many series of cascading pools. There were quite many people, but it was nice to see a paradise in front of us. The water was worm, and it was flowing down to the Florence Falls with plenty of strength, so it was very cool to swim against.
After the Buley Rockhole, we went to a settled part of the cascades and had lunch. I was the only one wanting to have a bath after lunch, so I had my bath at the river and then we packed and went to the Florence Falls, the biggest ones around the Darwin area. Once at the Florence Falls, we bathed for more than an hour and we took many pictures. We did a walk through a forest that was full of giant spiders (female ones), and we went around the falls to have an overview of the whole place. It was extremely beautiful.
As the sundown was approaching, we went to visit other minor falls, which were closed due to the existence of saltwater crocodiles. We were excited, because we wanted to see this type of crocodile in action, but there was no luck. After visiting all the minor attractions, we all voted for going back to the Buley Rockhole to have the last bath right at sunset.
That moment was beautiful, because everybody had left, and it was only the four of us, swimming in the plunge pools, watching the sunset and some sporadic eagles feeding themselves. The rest of the trip was on the road, back home, and we went to have dinner with the girls that night, since they were leaving the next morning. After dinner, we had some drinks and they asked us to write on their diary, it was an incredible experience even for one day.
By the way, that night, we met the Finnish girls (Sanna and Mervi), and we said goodbye to them. I had been calling the for the whole week, but they were sick or didn't want to go out of the hostel (probably to save some money, since they were going to Vietnam after Australia). We exchanged our Finnish telephone numbers and that was it, we agreed to meet them back in Finland when they would come back from Asia.
Kakadu National Park
The next morning we woke up early and went to the reception, where we were picked up by a tour company to take us to the Kakadu National Park. It is a huge national park of about twenty thousand square kilometers, but we were going to visit only the key places.
On the bus, I quickly got to know three guys from the U.K.: Yumna, Ivana and Juanito Banana. Yumna was from Gibraltar (it was funny to speak half-English half-Andalusian with her), Ivana was half-Serbian half-English, and John was completely English, but we named him Juanito Banana, he was very funny.
The first day (on Monday), we visited an aboriginal family, where they showed us their music instruments (basically the didgeridoo and the music sticks), and how they usually live in the forest. After that, we went on a small trip through a river to spot crocodiles, but we didn't spot anything at all, and we were all so disappointed. Then, we moved to the Kakadu National Park itself, where we visited ancient paintings from the first tribes in Australia. Some of the paintings where quite old and included animals, such as the long-neck turtle or the kangaroo. But most of the paintings described guns and weapons, which tell how they felt when they saw the white men conquering their land. After this visit, by sunset, we headed to the camping, where our tents were waiting for us.
That night, we had a big dinner and Norman, a guy working for Disney and traveling around the world with his camera, showed us great pictures and videos from his trip around Australia. Afterwards, we moved to a swimming pool that was there for the people who camped and we had a short party, drinking wine in the pool and having some laughs.
The next morning, we had to get up at 5 AM. The tour guide was cool, but his assistant was like a dictator, telling us to wake up or we would miss our breakfast. She also commanded us to sweep the whole tent, just before the breakfast. We all were so tired and slept in the bus on our way to the Twin Falls. There, we hiked for a while until we reached the top of the mountain and, right there, there was a tiny paradise, with plunge pools and tiny cascades. The main plunge pool was quite spread and it ended at a cliff, where there were huge waterfalls coming down to a small lake at the bottom. It was amazingly beautiful to swim there.
After that swim, we had lunch and said goodbye to the three people that were going to Litchfield the next day with the tour. The rest of us took a 2-day tour and so we were going back to Darwin. Once at the hostel, we met our friends again (including a very sweet couple from Denmark that we met the second day there) and we said goodbye to everybody. The next morning we were going to take The Ghan (one of the few trains around Australia) to go down to Alice Springs.
That night, we met a Spanish girl in the kitchen of the hostel, and she was taking the same train as us the next morning. Therefore, we agreed on taking a taxi to the station and share the costs. The next morning we basically moved out of the hostel and said goodbye to Darwin. We had a long trip to Alice Springs (about 24h by train), but the trip was going to be worthy. Let's talk more in the next entry about Alice Springs and our visit to Uluru..