From The Land Down Under

Our flight from Bangkok took us to Singapore and then Bali. Megan slept for a few hours during our layover in Indonesia but I didn't get more than 1 hour's sleep all night. My legs were feeling cramped and restless which kept me awake and I was engrossed in the book I'm reading about the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia called "Surviving the Killing Fields". Our plane touched down at Darwin International Airport this morning at 7:30AM and we rubbed our tired eyes and gathered our carry-on luggage.

We deplaned and made our way through the Immigration and Customs procedures. Australia is very, very strict in its restrictions on food, plants and organic items entering their country. We had some wooden chopsticks with us from Thailand which they pulled out of our backpacks but thankfully they weren't confiscated. We caught the shuttle bus outside the airport and headed for downtown Darwin.

We're staying at the Gecko Lodge which is about a 10 minute walk from the center of Darwin. We'll be here for 2 nights and then we're hoping to spend 2 days with Servas hosts. The only time we've stayed with a Servas family was on the island of Mauritius and we enjoyed the experience.

Megan's aunt Tilde and uncle Chris arrive in Darwin on the 21st and Henni flies in from Austria the next day. We're spending about a week exploring Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory by camper. Chris and Tilde are nature photographers and videographers and also write books on wildlife. We're very excited to be meeting up with all three of them (for me, it'll be the first time meeting Tilde and Chris).

The folks at our guesthouse informed us that the annual Beer Can Regatta festival was taking place down on the beach. We spent a few hours walking around looking at these big boats made almost entirely from beer cans. It was an interesting bit of Australian culture to witness. Tomorrow we're going to organize the rest of our travels through Australia. We have to decide how we're going to make our way down to Sydney - bus or airplane?