Kakadu dreamin'

Having spent a couple of days relaxing in Darwin, it was time to brave the heat and get out into the "real" Australia. So I signed myself up for a full-on five day tour of kakadu with Kakadu Dreams. I packed myself an optomistic change of clothes and a lot of sun / insect repellant and five days later was burnt and bitten all over.

The tour consisted of three days in Kakadu park, seeing saltwater crocs (salties) jumping for meat, gorges, waterfalls, billabongs and aboriginal art sites. Then we had a full day of canoeing in Katherine gorge, and another day visiting the popular watering holes in Litchfield, which became more like a wet'n'wild theme park than a wilderness adventure. Overall the tour was alright and went to some great spots. I think I had hoped to see more dangerous creatures than just the crocs, although maybe it was safer this way ! It was also very hot and humid, some days I was drinking 5+ liters of water and still dehydrating quite badly. Pictures of the adventure are all in the new Northern Territory photo album.

So on our final day we headed down a backpacker bar and got rather hammered. A little bit too hammered in my case as I stumbled down to the airport shuttle, somehow stayed awake in the airport departure lounge and then passed out for a deep but short sleep on my flight to Sydney. This mornings high-altitude hangover was a reminder of the perils of drink-flying. Thank god the nice trolley girls came round about two minutes later with fresh juice for everyone !

I am spending the next two days seeing old friends and sights in Sydney. Today I visted the old backpackers I was staying in and was suprised to see a few familiar faces still working and living there. Tomorrow I need to sort out stuff in the city in time for my trip to Taiwan, little things like Visa stamps and so on :)