We are now in OZ. We haven't written a blog in ages because we'e been busy travelling around the outback, I dread to think the amount of K's we've done travelling down from Darwin to Alice Springs and then out to Uluru; it was a lot of driving but well worth it.

We started our time in Australia in Darwin, the only state capital in the tropical zone. It wasn't that hot though because it's the dry season here, when we arrived in the morning it was a chilly 22c. We had a few days in Darwin before the trip started so we explored the town. It's quite a small place but nice. We went down to the marina where they have a little beach and a wave pool and loads of apartments, it was nice to chill out there on the grass next to the beach. The day after we went out to Cullen Bay and Myndil Beach. Cullen Bay is a nice harbour area, we sat down and had sandwiches whilst looking at the sea. At Myndil Bay we checked out the markets they have, there were food stalls, clothes stalls, aboriginal stalls and loads of other different places. The Road Kill Cafe had a funny sign: "You kill it, we grill it!".

The following day was an early start for the beginning of our tour, which was actually three tours stuck together to make one, this meant we kept getting new people for every tour, the only other person who was on all of them was an Irish girl called Judith so she became our friend for the next 7 days. The trip started from Darwin and headed into Kakadu National Park but before we got into the park we went into a wood for an Aboriginal Experience. We met Graham, an aboriginee who is also a park ranger. He told us a dream time story about the creation of his land and then we were given a traditional blessing, which is a welcome to the land and protects us from any bad spirits. This involved Graham taking a sip of water and then spitting out on your head, which was pretty funny. Some people weren't too keen but thats nothing compared to some of the other Aboriginal countries blessings, others wipe sweat on you as well. After we were blessed we were shown how they make their Dilly Bags (which they use when hunting and gathering), given a spear throwing demonstration (we were both rubbish when we tried) and a didgeridoo demonstration (I was quite good at that, Elisa was ok). He also showed us some plants and how they use them fro bush medicine and food etc. After the Aboriginal experience our next stop was the Corroboree Billabong where we went on a boat tour. Elisa lost her sun glasses by knocking them off her head into the billabong but I wasn't going in after them, there were crocs around. On the cruise we saw Crocs (salties, which are the nasty ones and freshies, which aren't too bad) and loads of birds (including the Jabiru, which is only found in the Northern Territory). We really enjoyed it, although the crocs weren't what I imagined. They were huge but they weren't doing much, they just laid by the billabong sunning themselves (they have to get their body temp to a certain temp before they hunt or do anything but even then they barely use any energy). After the cruise we went to Ubirr in Kakadu National Park, which is famous for its rock art. It was cool to see the rock art, some of which is thousands of years old, we were told the stories behind some of them as well. After that we climbed up the rocks andwatched the sunset, which was absolutely beautiful. The view was stunning even without the sunset, it looked out over the four different kinds of terrain, I can't remeber what they all were but there was savannah woodland, open plains, another kind of forest and the rocky kind of lands. The sunset was amazing, the sky was so red. When we get chance we'll put up the pics.

After a night camping we set off for day two, we went to see some waterfalls. After a very bumpy car drive and short walk we got to Motorcar Falls, which was pretty awesome. The waterfall was pretty big and the plunge pool had such clear water. We jumped off a boulder into it and found the water was freezing! We swam around for a bit and sunned ourselves on some rocks to warm up. Next we went to Gunlom Waterfall, where we had lunch. We ran out of time though so only had half an hour to get up to the top of the water fall and back again, which is usually a 25 min walk at normal pace. I ran up to the top but it was well worth it, there were three separate cascading waterfalls and three plunge pools, which ran into the huge waterfall at the end and went down into another plunge pool at the bottom of the hill. I took some pictures then ran down to check out the big waterfall, which was stunning and had a huge plunge pool. No-one was swimming in this one though because they haden't done the croc surveys so they could have been some in it. On the way back to Darwin we saw a Dingo by the side of the road, didn't look like I expected they would, I thought they'd be more like wolves or huskys which look a bit scary sometimes but they just looked like dogs.

hey its elisa here! went out for drinks n food with some of the people on the tour when we got back to darwin. tom had left his wallet on the bus tho so we wer in a panic not knowing whether we wud see it agen, and not be able to hire the campervan afterall! lukily we got it back the next day!

we got up early the next day to start the second part of our tour, with a new group, just us 2 and Judith and some new people. the group was ok, there was a guy called phill whos going to nottingham to uni WOOOOO so that makes him cool automatically, then there was a dutch who was ok, a chinese who didnt speak, and Cliff who was abit posh and rude, he moaned about needing protein in his diet, he was a veggie! Our tour guide/drive was the BEST, he knew everything, and told us lots of interesting stuff, and he was fun aswell! So we headed to a pub along the stewart highway which had Charlie the Buffalo from Crockodile Dundee film, it was stuffed tho! then we set off to go to Katherine Gorge, it was really beautiful, a big rocky gorge with water runnign through it. we got a boat around it which was cool. then we went on a walk near the gorge, when we got to the top we could see an amazing view of the gorge! after that we drove to the camp site and had a meal and drinks til early hours of the morn, and the stars were amazing! sooo many! we could see saturn, and saw some shooting stars, and the milky way!

tell you bout the next day soon... xx