Kakadu Dreams

On Tuesday I left behind the Great Barrier Reef and flew to Darwin, a small city at the top middle of Australia. It was bombed pretty badly by the Japanese during World War II and then destroyed again by a cyclone in the 70's. I arrived at my hostel around 9 pm and quickly realized that I would not ever be picking a hostel that was not in my guide book again. The place was pretty gross and my bed was a very thin mattress in a huge dorm room. I decided to spend the night doing laundry and going to bed early so that I would be well rested for my camping trip leaving the next morning. Sadly that was not to be the case. Around 11:30 just as I was about to fall asleep the very drunk Irishman in the top bunk next to mine rolled out of his bed and landed with a thud onto the floor. He let out a few whimpers but would not wake up when the person under his bed and tried to shake him. We decided to leaving him sleeping on the floor in between our beds, which meant that I had him snoring loudly practically next to my face. Eventually he rolled under my bed and got stuck there and kept kicking the bed. I tried shaking him again and considered kicking him in the head but it was still uselss. It was almost 2 am at this point and I was still not asleep and needed to be up at 6 for my trip. I decided that i couldn't take it anymore and called my friend Caitlin back home to complain. After that I found an empty room and brought my sheets there and got about 3 hours of sleep before checking out of the hostel. When I told the girl at the front desk what had happened she let me know that the room I had slept in was unoccupied because it was infested with bed bugs. I quickly booked a new hostel for when I returned from my trip and then hopped into a van to get taken to Kakadu National Park.
According to my guidebook kakadu is Australia's most famous national park. There were 9 people on my tour plus the tour guide. We all sat in the back of a 4 wheel drive on bench seats and bounced around throughout the wilderness for 3 days. Our first stop was a river cruise to see jumping crocs. Basically a lady tied some steaks to a big stick and held it out over the river and the crocodiles jumped a few times as she dangled it over there heads before letting them have it. Pretty cool. We then headed to the town of Humpty Doo (hehe) to pick up spme supplies (lots of beer) and then drove to our first hike. We climed up some boulders and such to a waterfall and for swimming in some springs. It was as hot as New Orleans in the summer and I don't think I have ever sweated so much. I jumped into the first sping expecting to hot some cool, refreshing water. The water was pretty much the same temperature as the air. We climbed up through a series of springs until we got to one that actually felt cool and then jumped from spring to spring back down. We arrived at our campsite and had some kangaroo for dinner and I fell asleep immediately upon hitting my sleeping bag about 3 hours before everyone else, thanks to the drunken Irishman.
The next morning we drove down some incredibly bumpy roads to see some wetlands and then another waterfall. Since the back of the 4 wheel drive did not have seatbelts we were all required to use one (or two) hands to hold on to the ceiling and try not to get thrown out of our seats. It was about 800 degrees plus humidity but we wnet another hike/boulder climb to see the falls. The falls turned out to be black streaks on a cliff where the water falls during the wet season. (Weather in the Top End is divided into two seasons, the wet and the dry, right now it is the end of the dry.) The scenery was still amazing though. We swam once again in pool the temperature of a hot tub and then climbed over some more rocks to a largher and actually kind of cold pool! However, to get there we climbed barefoot on boiling hot boulders. My feet still burn several days later. We spent maybe an hour swimming around before hopping and swearing back across the boiling rocks and then clmbing back down the trail. Most bodies of water are closed for swimming in kakadu thanks to crocodile infestation. At one point of the hike their were showers that pumped water out of the no swimming allowed river to cool you down and prevent people from choosing death by crocodile over death by heat and not being allowed to jump into the water. That night we camped out by a billabong where 5 years ago a tourist was eaten by a croc when her tour guide led their whole group for a swim. Also, we saw a wild boar on our drive in and were warned that snakes were everywhere in the grass so that you needed to bring a buddy with you anytime you went to the bathroom. Feeling very safe and secure we set up our camp, had dinner, and then went on a nature walk to look for wildlife (i.e. crocs and deadly snakes.) Not really wanting to go but not wanting to stay behind alone at the campsite I chose the walk. About 2 minutes into it a brown snake slithered in front of my feet. I was pretty excited to be the first one to spot anything and also not to have stepped on the snake and got bitten and died. It turned out to be the 3rd most poisonous snake in the world. We saw another one and then saw a snake lying very still in the road. It was the non-poisonous kind and it turned out it was dead because we had driven over its tail. Everyone posed for pictures with the dead snake and then began trying to finsih the beer. In the middle of the night the other girl in my tent and I woke up to pee thanks to the beer. We opened our tent and saw a snake lying right outside of it. Due to being half asleep and somehwat drunk we stared at it for about a full minute before realizing it was the dead snake that someone had kindly placed in front of our tent. Now too afraid to walk all the way to the bathroom we decided to just squat on the other side of the van and get back into our tent as quickly as possible. The next morning we drove away from the terrifying campsite and went to see some ancient aboriginal art painted on the sides of rocks and then to another croc free billabong for some swimming and canoeing.
We got back to Darwin and i checked into my new (much nicer and guidebook approved) hostel before heading out for dinner with my group. Darwin might not have a lot to do but it does have a very interesting nightlife. We were greeted at the place where were having dinner and drinks by a group of girls dressed in underwear and cowboy chaps and very little else. We competed in some interesting competions to win free drinks (sadly we were not winners.) The cowboy girls then began dancing on the bar and we decided to move on someplace else. I ended up at a gigantic nightclub called Discovery and danced the night away until 4 in the morning. I am not a nightclub fan but this place was amazing, and also had some hilarious people watching. The next day I did laundry again and then decided to walk around Darwin. I made it to the waterfront but then decided I was going to melt away so I spent the rest of the day finding air conditioned spots to read and write postcards in. In the evening I met up with Kerstin from my trip to go to the Deckchair Cinema. It's an open air movie theatre on the ocean where you sit in deckchairs and eat dinner and have some drinks and watch a double feature. We first saw the Simpsons movie and the lightning in the sky before it began to rain towards the end of the movie. We got wet but the rain passed pretty quickly and we then saw a movie called Black Sheep about killer sheep in New Zealand that was pretty terrible. I then went straight to bed. Today I tried walking around the city again but couldn't really find anythinig to do. I am off now to the famous (here at least) Mindil beach market to watch the sunset and have some dinner before flying off to Perth tonight. Hopefully it will be exciting!