Hi y'all!

The day I got to Darwin I decided to do the Darwin City Heritage Walk. It was a walk mostly along the coastline of Darwin and it was beautiful. At the end of the day I had to pack my bag for my first tour.

My 10 day tour from Darwin to Alice Springs, was separated into three different tours. One from Darwin to Kakadu and Litchfield National Park, back to Darwin. One from Darwin to Alice Springs and the last one went from Alice Springs to Uluru back to Alice.

Kakadu and Litchfield National Park

We started the tour by going on a croc cruise. This time we saw way more crocs then I did in the Daintree Forest, we saw around 20 crocs, a couple of big ones (saltwater crocs) and lots of small ones (freshwater crocs). After our cruise we drove into Kakadu National Park, where we went to the Ubirr Art Sites. There were a lot of amazing rock paintings and signs that there had been Aboriginals living in that area. On our way to our first campsite, we drove right past a bushfire, there were quite a lot of bushfires on our way to camp.

On Sunday we drove to Jim Jim Falls, it had just reopened a day before our tour started. During summer (rain season) the water gets so high the saltwater crocs can get in, so before they reopen it they have to make sure there are no more crocs in there. We had to do a bit of a hike to get to the waterfall. They view was beautiful, unfortunately, the water was freezing, but that didn't stop us from swimming to the waterfall. On our way to our new campsite we had a quick ice cream stop, where they sold homemade ice cream, I got the TimTam flavor.

Monday we started the day by going to the termite mounds in Litchfield National Park, they were massive! There was a field full of magnetic termite mounds, these termites build their mounds in the same line as the magnetic pole of the earth. Near this field there was a tree full of green ants, the thing with these ants is that you can actually lick their butts (or eat them) and it will taste like lime. So I decided to try it, 'cause how many times do you get the chance to lick an ants butt, right? It was a really funny feeling, basically the ant will try to poison you, by stinging the lime taste in this case on your tongue, but it doesn't poison us. The Aboriginals use these ants to get some flavor on their meats or fish, they'd put some ants inside and cook it. After all this, we went to the Tolmer Falls Lookout, it was beautiful, but unfortunately nobody is aloud to go swimming in there, because there are bats in the cave under the waterfall and while it was still open for swimming, the amount of bats started to drop, so they closed the falls. We went to two more waterfalls where we were aloud to go swimming, the Wangi Falls, which was beautiful and it had a little warm rock pool under the waterfall as well. The second one was the Florence Falls, that one was really pretty but quite busy, so instead of staying there for a really long time, we drove to the Buley Rockholes, these were little rock pools with small waterfalls in between. That was our last stop before heading back to Darwin.

Darwin to Alice Springs

We started the tour by going to Edith Falls, it was really beautiful and we could go for a swim. After swimming for a bit, we drove to Katherine Gorge. There were so many bats in the trees, it was crazy! They were all hanging on the same branches, so at some point one of the branches broke off and all of the bats started screaming and flying off. We walked all the way up the hill and tried to spot a croc in the river below us, but we couldn't find any. From this tour on, I only slept in swags, so the first night I was able to spot a shooting star.

On Wednesday we started the day by going to hot springs. It was shaped like a river and was so nice and warm. At some point we spotted a wallaby getting close to the water, it started eating grass and just sat there while we were swimming 1 meter away from it, it was perfect. We drove to camp and had a stop on the way at the oldest pub in the Northern Territory. Once we got to camp, there were two camels, two donkeys and two horses that we were able to feed. This night I saw five shooting stars before I went to sleep.

Our first stop on the last day was Tennant Creek, where we went to a small gallery with Aboriginal paintings in it. After that we drove to the Devils Marbles, which was really cool, they we huge! We had a stop at Wycliffe Well, which is the alien town of Australia. Apparently there have been abductions by aliens in this area and it's the only place where they've seen a lot of spaceships over the years. After our stop at the alien town we went to a mango farm to get some fresh ice cream, before we would arrive in Alice Springs.

Friday I had a day off in Alice Springs, I met a couple of others on the previous tours, who were on the 10 day trip as well. Lucky for us, the Beanie Festival started that day, so we got to check that out. It was a lot of fun, there were so many beanies! After the Beanie Festival, Mary and I went to look at some Aboriginal art at a gallery, it was really nice.

Uluru, Kata Tjuta and Kings Canyon

My last tour started really early in the morning. Our first stop was the most central point in Australia. After that we had to collect some firewood so we'd be able to make a fire at our campsite. After we dropped the firewood at the campsite, we drove to Uluru. Before we got there we stopped at the cultural centre, where we saw a film about how the Aboriginals lost their land and how they eventually got it back about 50 years ago. They also had a little art gallery where you could see some Aboriginal women painting new paintings, which was pretty cool. After about an hour we finally went to Uluru and it was really impressive! We did a walk around Uluru and saw some rock paintings and caves and freshwater holes that the Aboriginals used to use. Around 6o'clock we went to the sunset lookout, unfortunately there were a lot of clouds, so we didn't get to see much of the sunset.

The next morning we were supposed to go see the sunrise at Uluru, but it was still too cloudy, so we drove straight to Kata Tjuta, where we did the Valley of the Winds walk. It was beautiful (I took most of my pics with my camera though, so I won't be able to upload those).

Our last day we got up really early to do a sunrise walk on the Kings Canyon. It was really pretty. At the end of the walk, our tour guide showed us a bush plum that you can eat. If it's ripe, it's supposed to taste sweet, but the one I tried wasn't ripe yet so it was quite bitter. Our last stop before we got to Alice Springs, was at a rescue farm. They had lots of camels, which we got to ride, a couple of kangaroos and some emus.

Today I didn't do much besides getting my bags ready for my flight to Sydney tomorrow.

I had a great time! Don't forget to have a look at my new pics.

Cheers!