flying over the top end

Australian airport security is not so hot as my backpack passed through the x-ray machine with a large spray bottle of sunscreen and a water bottle half full. Good thing you can't actually catch terrorists by restricting their liquid carryons.

Circling over the ocean, I see white and aqua sandbars, and what I think is the Great Barrier Reef. We also fly over the Wet Tropics and Atherton Tablelands. These mountains are absolutely COVERED in trees. When we fly over the Cape, you can see windy turquoise rivers emptying into the sea. The water is so blue.

There are many bush fires on the north coast of NT and I can see the smoke pooling towards the sky as we fly over. I hope they are not burning my beloved Kakadu park which I am PSYCHED about camping in. The coastline over the Top End is just as mesmorizing as the east – there are snaking rivers and scalloped beaches and a long red cut into the earth where the rock is exposed. I learn later that this is the boundry between Kakadu and Arnhem land. The escarpment. I will be climbing it on my camping trip.

Darwin is very flat. From the airport, I only encountered one roundabout, thank God. It is about 85 degrees and remains warm until 10pm, when the temperature drops to about 65. Heaven.

At the McDonalds where I buy my daily ice cream, I am served by a 7 year old. I swear, he came up to my chest and still had his milk teeth. Darwin is weird. My hostel roommate is Bernard and he is French. We eat dinner together, although separate food because he has cooked LAMB and is drinking WINE and I have poured boiling water over ramen. Our other roommate is Andrew the English barman. Our hostel room is so small you have to suck in to pass between the bunkbeds.

The rest of the day, I stress about my schedule and stress about money and stress about whether or not I am seeing the right things on my vacation until I remind myself that this is my summer break and I CAN DO ANYTHING I WANT. So then I bank on my intuition and book a 3 day tour of Kakadu, a hostel the night I get back, a bus ride down to Alice Springs, and a 3 day tour of Uluru and the Red Center. This costs so much that I have to withdraw money for two days at the maximum level. But then again, I will not be paying for anything for the next week.

Australian thing of the day: Pineapple fritter at Red Rooster. Delicious. Sweet and soft on the inside, crunchy on the outside. I had a totally weird experience though, where the cashier looked at me funny, like am I SURE I want a pineapple fritter? And the server asked me if I thought it was cooked properly, even though I have never eaten one before and since when do you ask the customer in a fast food restaurant if your food is cooked properly? I am not returning to Red Rooster.