Darwin-4WD-Day 1 Journal Entry

June 9th, 2007

We woke up super early for our 2 Day 4WD Camping trip. I have to admit I was very nervous not knowing what to expect! We packed our one backpack and were picked up in a large 4WD jeep with a trailer, and we met our tour guide named Paul. We also met our group that we were going to be with for the next 2 days. There was a young couple our age that was from England. Interestingly, they worked for a company together for 3 years, and in this company, they have a choice to take 6 months off if they want to do anything. They automatically get their job back when they return! Can you believe this! It’s awesome! So, they have been traveling for the whole 6 months. They spent 4 weeks in New Zealand, 6 weeks in Australia, and they are heading up to Asia area before heading home. The other people in our group were 4 men in their 40’s from Melbourne, Australia. They call themselves the DMC club (Divorced Men’s Club) +2. Two of them are divorced and the other 2 are married. They were soooo hilarious the whole time! And, there was one woman our age from China that was traveling around Australia and working to get her VISA.

We headed out of Darwin to the local park called Kakadu National Park, about 3 hours East of Darwin. It spans 20,000 square kms (about the same size as Denmark) and is home to many Aboriginal tribes. Oh, yes, and lots and lots of crocodiles! We started off with an off road drive down this long dirt road in the park. The park was amazing, just green trees everywhere, some mountains off in the distance, and a dirt road.
We all at first thought this guy Paul was crazy because he really drove fast since no one but tour groups drives down this road. We even had to drive through a couple flowing rivers about 2 feet deep. Thank God for the 4WD!

We arrived at this place that does “Spectacular Jumping Crocodile Cruises” down the Adelaide River. At the area where we were hanging out waiting for other people to arrive, they have several snakes in cages. Paul took out a large black snake and let us all touch it and hold it. Pedro and I even put it around our necks! After hanging out with the snakes, we boarded our boat for the crocodile cruise. The Adelaide river was very muddy and brown..no wonder crocs love it!

We rode along down the river and when they spotted a croc, the boat slowed down to see if the croc would come near it. I guess the crocs learn that when they see this boat, they could get some food! Then, one of the workers dangles the bait (raw meat) off of a string and tries to get the croc to come near it. The worker keeps pulling it away from the croc and eventually the croc will jump out of water to get it!! It was amazing that a large croc could really do this! We did this a few times with several crocs before returning back to the car to continue on our 4WD tour.

After the croc cruise, we drove about another hour to another off road site to a beautiful location called a billabong (or swamp in Australian terms). It was a huge billabong and off in the distance you could see wild horses. Here, we parked the car and had some sandwiches and snacks. After lunch, we drove a bit more till a touristy site that many travel to see some famous Aboriginal artwork on the mountainside. Each piece of artwork has a very interesting story to it. Some of the artwork that we saw date back to over 25,000 years ago. It was really spectacular to learn the history and background of the Aborginal culture.
Along our walks, our tour guide, Paul, would stop us and introduce us to different types of plants, animals, etc and their use for the Aborginal culture. We got to taste passionfruit, mint, citronella and more all from different plants. The most interesting one is there are these green ants that if you pick them up and squeeze their butt and lick it, it tastes like lemon and lime together! I wasn’t to keen on licking an ants butt, but Pedro did and said it tasted awesome!

After doing a little more hiking, we headed to our campsite. Along the way we stopped at an overpass to view the sunset in the park. The haze from the fire smoke made the sunset even more unique with the colors we saw.

We drove some more backroading till we arrived at a campsite. Interestingly and to my surprise, this was an “official” campsite where many other tour groups went. It had appropriate places to make a fire, park the cars, and even toilets!!(well….toilets in the sense of a deep hole in the ground with a toilet bowl to sit on!) I was amazed.

We started unloading the truck and setting up the campsite-tents, etc, and got ready for preparing dinner. We cut up tons of veggies and through them in the skillet and grilled them over the fire. Potatoes were wrapped in foil and stuck in the ashes of the fire to cook them while we got everything else ready. Last, we used a frying board to cook up some kangaroo and sausages. It was an awesome dinner for out in the wild! Pedro and I tried our first ever kangaroo and I have to say it was pretty good! It really tasted very similar to steak. After dinner we all hung around the fireplace talking. Pedro was a lifesaver to all the DMC men’s club when he said, “Hey, guys, you want any Habanos cigars?”! Paul, our tour guide, brought along the Aboriginal instrument called the Didjeridu. As I described from Ayers Rock, it’s just a long hollow tube that you make music with based on the way your mouth moves. It’s very hard to make the sounds actually! But, it was fun trying! I appreciated people who play this even more than ever after hearing this.

After hanging out for a while, we all made our way to our tents, which by the way, were tents with see-through tops so we could look out at the sky which was again amazing! The Milky Way was so clear and we saw several shooting stars. During the night, one of the DMC men snored like crazy and I remember hearing the other men kept yelling at him and throwing things at him. The next day, he never heard the end of it!