Day 7- On the road to Kakadu now! We have a new tour guide now, Andy, who is super awesome already, and possibly even more Aussie than Luke. We'll miss him and Kate though, we're sending her a VT hoodie with our signatures so she can be warm in the Alice Springs winters.
Things have progressed this morning. We're all in love with Andy.
Andy's photography skills.
He had us do the Wheatbix challenge. Wheatbix is this biscuit of just wheat, it's really crumbly and dry. So you race to see who can eat it fastest. Tori was best
at 1:04, and Geyer last at 3 minutes flat. But we lied to Jordan and told her she got
3:11. She still doesn't know. Nathan ran through a bush full of itchy caterpillars and has a rash on his chest, it was so funny. We saw a giant termite home!
It's made of their poop. We're in a park called Litchfield. We stopped to swim at this waterfall.
I jumped off a cliff! What a strange country, Australia. A couple days ago we were freezing our bums off in the middle of nowhere, now we're in a tropical paradise. And no one is dead! Just itchy. Then we went and looked at another waterfall high above this place where the country just drops off into flood plains. Then we swam at a third waterfall site where we had lunch.
There were a bunch of ledges by the falls, so we could climb up and just lie there in the sun and water. So beautiful. The pool was so big you could swim to the middle and your vision is filled with just cliffs and waterfalls and trees sprouting out of the rock, I wish I could take you all there! Then we frolicked in the grass playing footie and frisbee and eating lunch, and huge birds dive bombed us. Andy taught us dance to a major Aussie song "home among the gum trees." Then we stopped at a gas station/the home of an enormous crocodile. He's a salty so he's huge, 5 meters, and his name is Brutus. We got him to come right out of the water by saying his name in deep voices ["speaking dirty to him"].
He's real!
There was also a little freshie. And an albino bison. American gas stations don't even have one crocodile. As we were soon arriving at our campsite, we felt a bump under the bus. We'd clipped a wallaby, not unexpected as we're traveling at 100 kmph and they're abundant here. But we broke its leg, so we had to turn around. Andy and a few of the boys went into the bush to find it and put it out of its misery, which is what you're supposed to do Andy says. Sorry little wallaby :( then we camped! We all chipped in to make some curry, and we had cantaloupe for dessert. We all did line dances for a long time, like the wop, the wobble, cotton eye joe, Cupid shuffle, and then the gum tree song some more. Then
most people went to the little pool nearby but Scott and I made domino structures. Then Jordan, Sarah, and Kelci played go fish with us. I came in last! Then we made card houses! Day 7 ended battling the hordes of mosquitos that lived at the camp.
Scott is a master domino engineer.
Day 8- within the first 10 minutes of being awake this morning we set a kitchen fire. We were just toasting some toast for brekkies, and then the toaster said "pop" and there was a small fire at the outlet, which Andy casually put out. Then he and Ben went over to investigate and there was a bigger pop that almost took them both out, and the toaster was on fire. It turned out that Nathan's Go Pro battery had fallen inside when someone took it out of the outlet, and so that exploded. Whoops. CROC CRUISE this morning. We saw bunches, some quick freshwater whippersnappers, and some saltwater fatties.
And then we officially entered Kakadu national park!
It's enormous, the size of Switzerland. Our newest bus game is bug bingo. We divided up the front windshield into 17 sections, and when we stop
tonight, whoever has the most and biggest bugs squished there wins a beer. Then we played car cricket, where each person rides shot gun while 6 cars pass, and tries to get those people to wave. You get a point for each finger they use to wave. I really sucked at it, which saddens me. I need to be a more welcoming road patron. Or Australian drivers are grumpy, likely because its almost 100 degrees and the air is really water. Perfect conditions for our hike, which was in Ubirr, a huge site for Aboriginal rock art. It was an awesome hike, with tons of amazing paintings, rocks, stories, and views from the top of a plateau. We played the lion king soundtrack and looked over the "pride lands," the Aboriginal lands to the east of Kakadu.
The art is really incredible, they have paintings of what happens if you live near the Kakadu uranium mines, way before medicine came onto the scene.
We licked some more ant butts and Andy randomly ate a huge spider. It wasn't even to show us or look manly, he did it really quick and sneaky-like so only a couple of us saw... Our newest game in the bus is who can squish the mosquitos that leave he biggest blood smears. We seem to be turning a little bush. Now it's our last night of camping, and again we're hiding from the mosquitos. We did venture out to the jetty on the billabong to check out some barramundi fishing, and to look for crocs. I made garlic bread to sustain us before dinner, which was lamb chops and all sorts of fancy things. We ate family dinner, a perfect last night in the outback.
This little guy lived outside our tent.
Day 9- Our time outback [and in Australia] is getting short. We fly to Carins
tonight and leave in just over a week. But, there are so many awesome things left! Today we scooted out of camp and over to Gunlom Falls, our last piece of Kakadu. It was about
7 am and we already had a look of steamed broccoli about us, it is so hot and wet. But the falls were incredible! We did a big treacherous hike up to the top and swam in all the upper pools. They were riddled with rocks full of holes for critters to hide in. We clambered through cracks and slid over boulders and all this stuff. I slid down into a rock and got best blood!
We climbed over to the waterfall on the enormous cliff, and I got to lie there on the edge, so cool!
We were way up at the top of the falls to the right!
We waved to Geyer way down in the lower pools, and we could see mountains in the distance. Then we went to the lower pool and had an obnoxious splash fight. Then a couple of us sunned ourselves on rocks like lizards. Also there were crocs in the water, classic Australia. I just sneezed and a little bug came out. On the way to the airport we stopped for some delicious homemade ice cream, and played "Cambodian bowling" in the aisle of the bus with a potato and empty bottles.
Geyer won with a strike!
Andy showed us the bus on "'roo fuel," where he basically breaks a lot and the bus acts like it has hydraulics. SO FUN. The last thing on the way to the airport was a stop at the Charles Darwin national park to see Andy's favorite sign [Beware biting insects] and to get some pics of the city from a good lookout. But as the sign indicated, the short grassy walk to the lookout was laden with biters, so only Nathan, Ben, and Lucas wanted to get out and tke a look. So we drove away and left them and chilled down the road 20 minutes to make them sweat [and itch]. Oh Andy. Now we're in the Darwin airport about to fly to Carins, survivors of the outback and stoked for the next chunk of our adventure!
No big deal
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