Australia wrap-up

The second part of my Outback tour was touted as being the most boring tour in all of Australia by our tour guide. He said this because there just isn't that much to see or do between Alice Springs and Darwin, just a whole lot of red sand, bushes and a few rocks. But luckily for us, he was a really good tour guide who made an effort to keep it interesting, even if there was a lot of driving involved.

The best stop of the tour was at Devil's Marbles, basically a bunch of huge rocks sitting in the Outback as if they had been placed there by some unknown giants. We scrambled around the rocks, taking amazing pictures at all the best photo ops. It's at one of these photo ops that I had my latest mishap that of course, I'd love to share with you.

Carl, our tour guide, proposed that we take a group photo on top of a big rock. He then looked at me and amended that, hum, maybe we'd be better off taking the photo in front of the rock, not on top of it. You see, the thing was that you actually had to leap onto the rock from a lower rock a few feet away. Imagine, to think he actually doubted my ability to get on the rock! The cheek of him! So of course, I say no, no, I can do it. Or at least try to do it. And of course, what was bound to happen happened. I didn't quite make it far enough, went "splat" onto the rock, lost my shoe somehow (???) and was flat on the rock desperately trying not to fall off like my shoe did. I basically had to scrape myself up onto my knee and then scramble safely onto the rock. I survived, but managed to scrape my knee pretty good. But someone was kind enough to retrieve my shoe from down between 2 rocks, so all was well. Hopefully the pictures will be worth it...

The third and final part of my tour was a 3-day sprint around Kakadu and Litchfield National Parks, way up top near Darwin. I say near Darwin, but really, nothing in Australia is really near anything else, so again, there was a lot of driving involved. This is also where I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Here are some highlights:

• Dragged my ass on an what should have been an easy 3.5 km walk to get to a swimming hole, wearing my fly net the whole time and still getting freaked out by the amount of flies around my face.
• Cooled down in the swimming hole for a while, then dragged my a** back from the swimming hole, this time twisting my ankle, falling and scraping the other knee that had so far been intact.
• Went on a guided night walk through the forest on Xmas Eve, looking for snakes, spiders and crocodiles. Found 2 out of 3 (no snakes) but as an added bonus had my first experience with leeches!
• Had a huge traditional Xmas lunch on our tour, with ham, turkey, chicken, salads, ... all the while fighting off the biting ants and coping with heat.
• Went to another swimming hole after Xmas lunch to cool down again, only to be nibbled on 3 times by biting fish! On my disgusting wounded knee that still won't heal in all this heat and humidity! Arggg!
• Finished off Xmas day by going out to dinner in Darwin with the gang from our tour. Somehow, we didn't get the memo that most restaurants would be closed on Christmas Day. Who knew! ;-) Ended up having an excellent (not) Chinese/Italian take-away meal with the gang.

So, all in all I had a great time in the Australian Outback and a good Christmas as well. I have to admit that my comfort level was severely tested during these 2 weeks, and I'm surprised that I managed as well as I did. But now, I am honestly quite pooped. It was great, and I would recommend it to anyone, but I also find that 2 weeks is a long time to be on a tour. I've realised that tours are great for meeting people, but the downside is that I don't have as much independence as I'd like. You have to pace yourself with the group, which in my case is way faster than what I'm comfortable with. A bit tiring for me, but also worth it in the end.

So as I'm writing this, I have now made my way to my first stop in Asia: Singapore! Free Internet at the hostel (cool!) and still hot & humid weather (oh well).

I wish you all a Happy New Year. Hopefully, 2008 will bring you all the best!