A Week of Australia

G'day.  Its been much more difficult to get some internet time when doing this kind of travel, but now I am hanging out in my hostel in Singapore avoiding the heat of the day.  So here is how it was in OZ:

We got to Sydney back on July 5 (after sleeping the previous night in the Auckland airport).  It was kinda strange being back and seeing the city after not being there since I studied abroad there in '04.  There was no where to ditch our bags, so we just wandered around the opera house with everything until about lunchtime when we met with Yash (a friend from UNSW).  That afternoon, more wandering around until at one point we saw a bunch of people huddled around something.  Oh; a free ferry.  So we hop on, and it was not until we were going somewhere that we found it was off to an art show on cockatoo island.  So random, just like the picture on the right...

Then we hung out with good ol' Fidel on his deathbed.  See?

Anyway, that night we hung out with some couchsurfers, Cherie and Tim.  The next morning, it just so happened to be that my cousin Jess was vacationing in Sydney and so we met up and wandered around until it was time to head to the airport and head off to Darwin.

With a 5 hour layover in Melbourne, we get to Darwin at 3am, and head downtown, and hostels are still open and there are tons of drunk college kids wandering around.  This is quite different than NZ where everything is closed by 9pm.
So why Darwin?  I dont know, but it was a sweet time.
We spent the next night with Rob, someone who we met on couchsurfing who lives on his yacht.  He is all off the grid, does not own land or a car, and just sails all over the place.  We had some great conversations and was gently rocked to sleep by his boat.

Thats us, Rob in the middle, and Christophe (another couchsurfer) on the right.

After that night we head back into town to pickup a rental car - a twin cab ute (a.k.a pickup truck).  We found 2 foam pads in a tree (yea we're good like that), got some food and a mosquito net and headed out to Litchfield national park.  There were all sorts of short walks to waterfalls and swimming holes and termite mounds and that good stuff.  Below are the magnetic termite mounds who orient their nests north-south to have the least amount of sun on them.  Oh yea, and did i mention, it was really f'in hot there.  About as hot and humid as the hotter days in NY's summer, but this is the cool and dry season.  I cant imagine what the summer is like.  Yikes.

For each of the three nights we had the ute, we just set up the net in the bed and fell asleep looking up at the stars.  It was actually quite a sweet setup.  We did have a bit of a scare on the first night when we were eating dinner under the net with our headlights on and then found a ton of bugs under our legs.  Oh shit, what if these mats were dumped cause they had bedbugs?  We almost packed up and left right there to go burn all our clothes... but instead used our scientific thinking to find out what they were.  Neither of us knew what bedbugs look like, but we had some itchy bites.  With shining some light on random pieces of clothing laid out, and then on the mats, with some additional steps and details in there and an hour later, we eventually decided that the bugs were from the area, attracted to light, and small enough to fit through the holes in the net.  All wee needed to do was not have any light inside the net.  And luckily we were right!  Check out this luxurious pad:

Then on our last night in Darwin when we thought our adventures in Australia were over.... haha.  We were staying near the ocean somewhere (beautiful sunsets and sunrises by the way) and just when all the cars left the parking lot at dark and we got settled, 2 cars pull out and a bunch of kids and adults get out and start wandering all over the place with garbage bags and flashlights.  We kinda do our thing for a little bit, but then go over to them to ask what they were doing.  Toading!!  Apparently the cane toad is an introduced species that is eating the local hermit crabs there.  So they were gathering up all the cane toads that they could find (which turned out to be about 200 by the time we finished there).  When I asked what they do with them, they said "take 'em to the dump so they can turn them into fertilizer".  And no, they were not joking.  So it seems Nico and I cant get away from randomness (which seems to go along with travelling, I like it) and also conservation work.  So I got some latex gloves (yup they have poison on their backs), and Nico got a bag and a flashlight and we started catching the toads too!

Now we are chillin in Singapore for just 2 days before heading to Indonesia for an unknown amount of time.  Singapore is an Asian city unlike all the rest as it is actually very clean and safe and everyone speaks English.  And there was even some pickup ultimate last night!  It felt so good to finally play a bit and then hangout and get some dinner with the locals.

Dont know when I'll have interwebs again... but I'll leave you with this nice picture from Litchfield - gotta watch where you walk! (I was within inches before I noticed this guy)