Darwin

Darwin is to National Parks as Cairns is to scuba diving; they’re just places you stay until you go off and do those two things. Otherwise, not much there. We arrived in Darwin late afternoon on Wednesday, checked into our hostel and found out that it was Territory Day which meant markets down by the beach and fireworks when it got dark. Our friend Nina who we lived with in Sydney was in town as well, so she met up with us down at the markets. Australian market food is a lot like American fair food…various forms of fried dough and things on a stick, aka delicious. We ate dinner down there, shopped and watched the fireworks. Australians are really good at fireworks. It seems like they set them off for any occasion they can think of, and the shows are always long and elaborate. This was the 4th fireworks show I’ve seen since I arrived in Australia.

The whole purpose of being in Darwin was to go on a tour of Kakadu National Park. Our tour didn’t leaving until Friday so we had a day to kill. We went down to Darwin’s fake beach…fake because Darwin and all of the Northern Territory is saltwater crocodile heaven so you can’t go near the real water. We hung out there for awhile and then went next door to the wave pool. The wave pool was full of bratty kids. Australian kids are especially bratty because parents here are really apathetic. Katy and I like to play “guess the parent” whenever we see a kid by themselves. Little kids are always wandering around or doing something bad and appear to have no supervision. The parent usually ends up being the adult that’s furthest away from the kid with their back turned. A mom at the wave pool told her little girl that it was time to leave. The little girl stomps back to the water, turns around, and yells “SHUT!!! UP!!!” at her mom and her mom just shrugs and goes back to what she was doing.

We went back to the markets with Nina that night, ate more fried food, and said goodbye to her since she was leaving in the morning. Then we went to bed early to prepare for our 3 day camping trip to Kakadu. The woman who booked our trip said we might get one shower during the 3 days. I am nervous because I do not like feeling hot or dirty.

Crystal Cascades and Mission Beach

Last Monday we took the free trip offered by our hostel out to the Crystal Cascades, near Cairns. They take about 15 people every Monday and show you around that area for the afternoon. Two guesses as to what the Crystal Cascades are. Waterfalls!

On the way there, we stopped in front of someone’s house to look at a nest of green ants on a tree in their front yard. We didn’t stop just to look at them, we stopped to “try” them. Apparently if you catch a green ant and lick it’s butt, it tastes sour like lemon-lime. And now I can say from personal experience that yes, a green ant’s butt does taste sour like lemon-lime. It’s actually a really intense taste; very, very sour. One was enough for me. I’ve heard that they’re on the menu at certain restaurants. That might be interesting.

We spent the afternoon swimming in two different places in the Crystal Cascades. The water was really cold so I was in and out pretty fast but it was nice to just sit by the water and have a change of scenery. One of the waterfalls was pretty big, the rest were more like rapids.

We went to bed early that night because we had to get up early to go to Mission Beach to watch Jamie skydive. Since she would be landing on the beach, Katy and I just had to lay there in the sun and wait for her to parachute down to us. She jumped from 14,000 ft so she had over a minute of free fall before her parachute even opened. And it was after that before we even saw her in the sky. It seemed to take her forever to get to the ground after her parachute opened. But she landed safely, right in front of us on the beach, and said she loved it. I had kind of put skydiving on the back burner but watching her land really made me want to do it again so….who knows.

Mission Beach was really pretty; lots of palm trees and coconuts all over the beach. It was a nice last day in Cairns.

The next day we flew to Darwin.

Books and Katy's Birfday

The past few days haven’t been too exciting. I’ve just been reading and laying out at the lagoon every so often. I think I’ve read more books in the past month than I have all year. It took me forever to read that stupid book about Australia. There were so many facts and figures that my mind kept wandering and I would have to reread what I just read. And some how I was tricked into reading Twilight. I must have blacked out or something. Actually it was a choice between that and going out and buying another book, so I decided to get it over with so everyone would quit bothering me about it. I tired to go into it with an open mind, and there were definitely some good parts, but I thought the author was pretty repetitive in story line and word usage and really just dragged it out too long. I’m seriously considering writing Stephanie Myer a letter addressing her overuse of the word “incredulous” and telling her how it practically ruined the book for me. And then she will write me back and tell me that she doesn’t care what I think because a billion other people loved the book and she has enough money to buy the rights to the word “incredulous” and exclusively use it as much as she wants. Between Jamie and Katy, they have all four books here and I’m still undecided, but I will probably end up reading the rest of the series, not because I particularly want to, but since they’ll be lying around. In the mean time, I’m taking a Twilight break and reading Chelsea Handler’s memoir Are You There, Vodka? It’s me, Chelsea. And also, fyi, Lost in Translation the book is nothing like Lost in Translation the movie…in a bad way.

Katy’s birthday was yesterday. We celebrated by feeding her a ton of sugar and going to the lagoon during the day and then going out to eat that night. We went to a “modern Australian” restaurant that had all of the Australian animals; kangaroo, emu and crocodile. I’m glad they don’t eat koalas…that would be too sad. I’ve had kangaroo a couple times so I was excited to try the other two. We got a crocodile appetizer and I ordered the emu as my main course. Crocodile tastes like a cross between chicken and fish, which makes complete sense since it lives both on land and in water. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that emu is red meat. For some reason I thought it would be white meat, I guess because it’s a bird. It was really, really good…tasted like steak with kind of a different flavor but still mild.

Later we went out with our friends from Sydney who are here and some people we’ve met at the hostel. We kind of think the German guy in our room with us might be gay because he’s a really good dancer and his hair is always perfect. But all European guys love to dance so maybe he’s not. Maybe I just want him to be because I miss Scott. It was a pretty fun night even though there aren’t too many choices of places to go out around here.

I didn’t feel too good today. I slept so long that when I woke up, Michael Jackson, Farrah Faucet and Ed McMan were all dead.

I have the day to myself tomorrow because Jamie and Katy are going on another diving trip. I didn’t think I was quite up to trying it again yet so I decided to pass…still practicing breathing through my mouth.

Port Douglas/Cape Tribulation

The weather in Cape Tribulation was kind of overcast and rainy…hence, rainforest. We attempted to go out to the beach in the morning but it wasn’t even worth it. Jamie went jungle surfing through the rainforest that afternoon. Katy and I weren’t too interested/didn’t want to spend the money so we stayed behind and read our books the rest of the day. When Jamie got back we drove down and inland a couple hours to Yungaburra for the night.

Yungaburra is in an area called the Tablelands and there are a lot of waterfalls and things like that to see around there. On Friday morning we went to see the Curtain Fig Tree. From what I read on the plaque in front of the thing, apparently a fig tree started growing onto another really big tree and eventually overtook it and fell onto another tree next to it. The first tree rotted away and that just left the fig tree leaning on the other tree, which looks like a curtain. Super interesting, right? Definitely one of those things were you had to be there in order to appreciate it. It was pretty impressive in person.

Next we stopped at the Gale Cheese and Chocolate Factory for lunch…the highlight of the trip. I think if it were a cheese, chocolate and wine factory, I would have never left. Of course I got the cheese plate for lunch, ate the entire thing, and then got more than a few chocolates for later…or right then. Somehow I managed not to throw up.

After lunch we started our waterfall tour. I have seen SO many waterfalls on this trip and we don’t even stop at all of them, only the really famous ones. If we had stopped at every waterfall along the way on this trip, we would still be in the North island of New Zealand.

The rest of that day and all of the next was devoted to waterfall appreciation and various things in nature formed by volcanic gas. These included Millstream Falls, Innet Hot Springs, Crater Lakes, Millaa Millaa Falls, Zillie Falls, Ellinjaa Falls, and one more famous fig tree, the Cathedral Fig.

We got back to Cairns on Saturday afternoon and have just been hanging around. Katy and Jamie went on another tour today and I stayed behind to plan things for when Jessica comes. We have one more week here and then go to Darwin for a week to watch crocodiles eat meat off sticks dangling over the water. I hope I don’t die of boredom in the mean time. Just kidding, it’s not that bad.

Escape from Cairns

I'm on a boat

Port Douglas Yacht Club

Mossman Gorge

Palm Cove Beach

Palm Cove

Port Douglas

Trinity Beach


Last Tuesday we rented a car and took a little side trip a couple hours north to Port Douglas and Cape Tribulation. We stopped at a few beaches along the way to get some sun. It was surprising everything was so close because things in Australia are usually absurd distances away from one another. We stopped at Trinity Beach first and laid around there for awhile. Next we stopped at Palm Cove, which I really liked. It was kind of like a small resort town with nice beaches and good restaurants. It would be a nice place to go back to sometime for a vacation…and when I have more money. Our last stop before Port Douglas was Mossman Gorge which was pretty much just a wide river with some boulders in it and a small swimming hole. We ate at a really good Thai restaurant when we got to Port Douglas and then found where we were staying for the night.

The next day we walked around the town. It was a lot like Palm Cove with the nice resorts and restaurants and made me equally depressed that I couldn’t stay/eat at them. I finally bought some aboriginal art there though. I liked a lot of stuff that this one particular gallery but finally narrowed it down. The lady who worked there was actually really helpful as opposed to some galleries where they can be pretty snobby. She encouraged me to buy what I liked the most as opposed to something either by a more famous artist or that would go up a lot in value. I’m not planning on selling it so that doesn’t really matter to me. What I ended up buying was something I really liked that was still in my price range so I’m really happy with it.

We went down to the beach for the rest of the afternoon. At around 5 we went over to the local Yacht Club because every Wednesday, some of the members take whoever shows up there out on their yachts for free. So that was pretty nice…we went out for about an hour and got back right as it was getting dark. After that, we drove the rest of the way up to Cape Tribulation to go hang out in the rainforest for a couple days.

Scuba Trip

The Lagoon

I’m over a week behind on this thing…oops.

Last Monday we went on our dive trip. You book ahead for one dive and then you can buy additional dives once you’re on the boat. Katy, Jamie, Matt and I were all in a group with one instructor. They went over everything we needed to know down there and it was all simple enough. They showed us the underwater hand signals for “ok” and “problem” and go this way or that way. The only hand signal I ended up using in the short time I was down there was “problem.” There’s a bar a couple meters under the water that you hold onto as a group to practice some of the skills before you go all the way down and when we were doing that, I couldn’t catch my breath at all. The instructor kept signaling for me to take slow, deep breaths but I never felt like I was getting enough air. Problem. He went up to the surface with me and told me to try this or that to make it better. I went under and grabbed the bar again. Panic attack…problem. After that I decided I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to have some sort of weird hyperventilating episode when I was really deep and then not be able to make it to the surface. Getting eaten by a shark is at least a cool underwater death…drowning even though you have a tank full of air strapped to your back is not.

So I snorkeled the rest of the day, which was actually really good. The reef is so close to the surface that you really don’t even need to dive…or at least that’s what I tell myself. The reef is SO big. But I guess that’s why they added the word “great” in front of the barrier reef part. There was so much to look at and so many different fish that I’d never seen before. Everyone else I was with loved diving, of course, and went for a second dive in the afternoon. So I snorkeled some more by myself and got a chance to use my waterproof video camera. There were some really huge schools of fish that swam by me which was really cool. I didn’t see any sharks, unfortunately.

I haven’t completely given up on diving. I’m going to try it again when Jess is here in July and we go to the Whitsundays. Until then, I will be taking long, deep breaths in and out of my mouth.

Cairns

We’re in Cairns and I got my wish: it’s hot here. It’s not even really hot though, it’s more of a tropical-breezy-warm. Our hostel has a pool but the pool only gets sun in the mornings and I’m not awake in the mornings, so I’ll probably just admire it as I walk to and from my room. No one wants to swim in a shaded pool.

The town is pretty small; everything is in walking distance. It’s definitely not a “city.” There’s a man-made lagoon with a fake beach that people lay out at. There isn’t a beach in town, but you can’t swim by the shore here because saltwater crocodiles will jump out of the water and eat you. The beaches are a 15 minute bus ride away but I don’t think you’re allowed to go in the water there either.

Our friend Matt who we lived with in Sydney is up here so we see him every once in awhile. He’s going diving with us on Monday. You don’t have to be certified to dive here because the reef isn’t so deep as to require a certification. And, getting certified is super expensive. We’re taking a day trip out to the reef which includes up to three dives and unlimited snorkeling.

Jamie got here on Tuesday. We’ve just been hanging out at the fake lagoon and walking around the shops. The fake lagoon is nice, but crowded, and there are lots of bratty kids running around. Too bad my flip flops broke in Melbourne because they have the best selection of Havaianas here that I’ve ever seen.

Last night we walked around the Night Markets and then went to see The Hangover. Today I did laundry and read my book most of the day. No solid plans until diving on Monday. And no pictures yet because we haven’t done anything eventful. I am enjoying the weather though.