darwin

We arrived in Darwin, on a flight from Cairns, on Wednesday, November 8th.

Today we started taking our malaria pills (lariam). We are supposed to take one, one week before we enter a malaria region, one each week the entire time we are in malaria regions and then one each week for four weeks after we leave the malaria regions. This means, if we stick to our tentative itinerary, we will be taking our malaria pills until four weeks after we leave Turkey a long time from now.

We stayed in Darwin from Wednesday, November 8th to Wednesday, November 15th. Our flight only left once a week, so we had to stay the entire week, even though we were ready to move on. We stayed at the Marrakkai Apartments. Our 6th floor apartment had an excellent view of Darwin and the harbor and we saw beautiful sunsets each night.

Thursday, November 9th, we checked out the local museum. It had some excellent examples of aboriginal art and a exhibit that showed the history of the city of Darwin.

Friday, November 10th, we walked around Darwin and the waterfront. It was hard to do anything outdoors during the day. It was so HOT!!! Plus the humidity was so high, it felt like you were breathing water.

Saturday, November 11th, we had an excellent fresh seafood dinner at Tim's in Cullen Bay. We sat outside and watched the sun set as a 2 foot long monitor lizard ate scraps from the people sitting next to us.

Sunday, November 12th, we experienced some of Darwin's nightlife at an Irish Pub, Shenanigan's.

Monday, November 13th, we rented a car and drove to Litchfield National Park. The park has a series of beautiful cascading waterfalls that form pools, which are a pleasant place to cool off and escape the sometimes oppressive heat of the Northern Territory. We took a dip in both Wangi and Florence Falls and hiked around Wangi Falls. It's kind of a trip to swim in a pool of water that has signs all around warning of crocodiles, but we heard it was safe, there was a bus load of other people there and we didn't see and crocs -- thank goodness.

Tuesday, November 14th, we made all our last preparations before we entered Southeast Asia. Mostly just converting money and stocking up on supplies that might not be readily available in Southeast Asia. We also made a decision to travel lighter. We sent back a large portion of our packs' contents and it did make a big difference when we put the packs on our backs. We may regret not having as much clothes and other personals, but we will no longer have a car from here on out and the traveling will be much more difficult. We think we made the correct decision.

Wednesday, November 15th, as we sat on our patio overlooking the harbor, waitng for our 10:00 PM flight to Bali, you could feel a change in the air. A storm front was moving in, creating a beautiful vista of colors over the horizon with dark clouds and bolts of lightening. The temperature dropped about 20 degrees in 5 minutes and you could just feel the winds of change at work. We were filled with both excitement and apprehension about moving to the next stage of our adventure. We were standing at the crossroads. It was a definite turning point and we could feel it..

Without looking back we left the Land of Oz (Australia) and entered into another world. We landed in Denpasar Bali at 1:00 AM Thursday, November 16th.