Ami Says . . .
Yesterday, we landed in Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia.
We canceled our excursion for this port since it was to be a hike in Litchfield National Park, a rain forest. Blaise was concerned about my sweating into my wounds, particularly the stitches – he didn’t think that would be a good idea. I was concerned about falling and further injuring myself or causing more pain to my nose. My nose still hurts to the touch and often after washing my face, my nose and cheek hurt – the cheek where I have the fracture in the sinus cavity.
So we set out on our own. Our preference is always to walk in the cities/towns we visit whenever possible. It was possible in Darwin, so that is what we did. Dang! It was hot! It was supposed to be 90 but it felt way hotter than that. I am a sweater so that was big fun. But after a while, you just own it and go with it.
Before we got off the boat, we consulted our book on Australia and decided to walk to the Botanic Garden. We took it slow. All in all we walked about 5-6 miles which was probably a good thing given our sedentary lifestyle of the prior 2 days. Usually I go to the gym on sea days but fearing more injury, I have not. Since today is another sea day, I should give it a go. I can’t live in fear of tripping and falling the rest of my life. Time to get back to it.
The walk to the Botanic Gardens was nice, if not hot and sweaty. Near the Gardens were some teenage girls playing rugby, I think. Blaise wasn’t sure if it was rugby or Australian rules football. Upon reflection, I don’t either. I didn’t see any scrumming but maybe they don’t do that in girls rugby. It was nice to see that even though it may have been a different sport, some things are the same around the world – kids playing organized sports on the weekend.
The Botanic Garden was lovely. No fee to get in – you just walked right in and wandered around. We saw a group of people exploring the gardens in segways. Blaise said he saw a sign that said they were $65 a day to rent. Seems a bit high to me. Segways seem like a novelty to me but a bit lazy. The place was not so big you couldn’t just walk it. Come on folks!
On the way out, someone pointed out a ginormous snake in a tree. If you are on FaceBook, I uploaded a picture of it. The only other place I’ve seen actual snakes that big is a zoo. Several zoos, but always a zoo. Never one “in the wild.” Kinda freaked me out. So on the walk back, not only was I watching everywhere I walked so I didn’t trip, now I was looking for snakes. If there is one thing I’ve learned visiting Australia is they have TONS of snakes and most of the most poisonous snakes in the world.
As we approached the wharf, we stopped at a coffee house. Blaise got some sort of coffee frape’ and I had a smoothie. Sitting there we utilized their free Wi-Fi and I uploaded a bunch of pictures to Facebook. If we had unlimited internet on the boat, I would spend the time uploading the pictures to the blog. It really would enhance the reader experience. But I refuse to spend money on the spotty, ridiculously slow internet they have on the boat. We each get 90 minutes of free internet and that is all I plan on using.
As we are sitting at the coffee house and I am uploading pictures, Blaise is watching the people walk by. Out of the blue he says “If you manufactured or sold bras here, you would go broke.” It took me a second, but I busted out laughing. Leave it to Blaise.
We made it back to the boat, hot, sweaty, and ready for a shower and a nap. After a quick nap and shower, I made my way to the medical center on the boat to get my stitches removed. The medical center has odd hours, I think: 8-11 and 4-7. I made it there about 4:30 and there were already people waiting to see the doctor: one lady with a nasty wound on her foot who apparently arrived first and another, but older, Asian couple – not sure what their deal was as it wasn’t obvious to the naked eye. So I was sitting there for about 10 minutes reading my book waiting to be called when the woman of the couple asked the other lady if they could go before her. She said theirs wouldn’t take that long so they should go first. What is wrong with people? Earlier in the day, I went to one of the public restrooms on the boat and some lady pushed her way in front of me and took the only open stall in the restroom. She said nothing, no “excuse me” or “can I go first, I have a problem.” Nothing. It’s as if many of these people have lost all manners they were ever taught.
Blaise told me when I was wheeled into the doctor’s office the day of my accident, someone was there waiting to get seen for a paper cut. A paper cut. That must have been some bad paper cut! In the history of paper cuts, has anyone ever actually seen a doctor for one? The only thing I remember about that guy is when they wheeled me in, all bloody and such, the guy said, “She needs to see the doctor before me.” Blaise told me later his issue was a paper cut.
Back to the doctor, I got in and the Romanian nurse removed my stitches while the doctor watched. No pain. It was just a weird feeling as the thread was pulled out. I’ve never had stitches so it was a new sensation for me. Frankly, this is the first time I have ever broken a bone as well.
As we pushed away from the dock at Darwin, I was a bit sad as we were leaving Australia. In spite of everything, I loved Australia. I don’t think we came across a single rude or unhappy Aussie. The people are wonderful and the terrain is beautiful. You really should take the trip to Australia if you ever get a chance!
We had a lovely dinner. The chef special for the evening was kangaroo. The waiter brought out a bit for us to try with our regular entrées. Blaise did not really want to try it – said it would be like eating koala, they are so cute. My thought was, we may never be in a place offering kangaroo again so we had to give it a try. We each had a couple bites. It didn’t taste like any other meat I have had. It didn’t taste like chicken or beef or real gamey like elk. It was a different taste. Blaise didn’t like it at all, probably couldn’t get past the fact he was eating a kangaroo. I was indifferent – didn’t love it but didn’t spit it out either. I probably wouldn’t order it again.
Again, no people at either table next to us. It was nice. I can’t figure out the sommelier. He has the personality of dry toast. And I don’t think he is really a sommelier. I can’t read his name tag because it is too dark in there but he is not helpful at all and I am not sure he is very knowledgeable about wine. Not that I am because I am clearly not. I just order what I like without regard to pairing it with my meal. But you think the dude would have a better personality in this business and would come forward with recommendations. Twice now he has been unable to locate the bottle of wine I ordered. Why is it even on the menu then?
After dinner, we played a few slot machines. We are not big gamblers, spending on $20 at a time. After being down to around $5 of the $20, we ended up winning a bit and left with $24. It is just a fun diversion for us.
Today, Monday is a sea day. Since I finished my Brett Battles book after returning to our room last night, I’ll start a new one today. Nice smooth seas today. We reach Bali on Wednesday.
Blaise Says . . .
Darwin, our last Australian who rah!!
We were to be in Darwin from 8a to 8p, one of the longest in port times I’ve seen short of an overnight like Venice. Darwin is a lovely metropolitan oasis in the Northern Territory with a fair number of multi-story high rises, the biggest are the Supreme Court and Government Buildings for the Northern Territory; I think AJ uploaded those pics so you can take a look there until we have the opportunity to upload them to the blog for posterity’s sake.
We were supposed to take a tour of Litchfield Park (we were going to see 12’ termite mounds and some beautiful water falls) but we decided that the heat and humidity as well as the open walk wouldn’t be great for AJ’s wounds so we decided to cancel our excursion and do Darwin on our own. We opted to take a stroll over to the other side of town to the Botanical Gardens and then walk back down the Esplanade to our boat. It all looked quite viable in the beginning, we would find out that 37 degrees in Darwin in the Spring is about 105F in DFW (think Jul). The minute we walked off the boat AJ was wringing wet and it stayed that way most all day.
We had a plan that said walk straight out of the immigration station up the road, first deviation, we get to a sign 15’ out of immigration that says wharf to the right, so we opted in and headed that way; I was thinking we’ll be back shortly I knew we would have to double back, I was wrong! Turns out they have a very nicely done wharf area but more importantly they have an elevator that takes you up 5 stories to a walking bridge that brings you right into the East side of the city, perfect I thought!! We were mere blocks from “The Mall” and 3.1kms from the Botanical Garden, just as a fyi if you ever happen across one of those 0.0, similar to the 26.2 and the 13.1, for the back window plz let me know where, I so want one of those.
We walked down to “The Mall”, the quotes are required because that was there name, not ours, it looked like an open air market with a number of vendors around a central area, who just happened to have a guitarist in it attempting to play a couple of riffs from Smoke on the Water or something and hoping for a tip; I thought about it since we wouldn’t have a need for Australian dollars after today but I still had the entire day to go so I held fast. But we did manage to find a pharmacy for a bottle of decongestant, all was definitely looking up now.
The rest of the journey to the Botanical Gardens came off without a hitch and we were able to follow the directions on the back of the fan that immigration provided as we came through; it was worth every penny of what she paid for it…but the map was very cute when you visualize it, it only has 3 streets running parallel to the bay and maybe 6 side streets that run perpendicular to the bay but as a fan, sheer genius.
The Botanical Gardens were quite nice and we enjoyed the walk, I saw that you could rent a Segway for $65 for an hour to see the place. I thought, aren’t you missing the point of a botanical garden if you hop on a Segway and speed past all the beauty in such a place? I assumed the Segway was the adventure and not the Gardens at that point, that was fine more for us to see and enjoy. We saw some massive trees, that AJ MADE ME take a picture under and we “necked” a bit under it while we cooled down for our return down the esplanade. On the way out we stopped to watch a bunch of young ladies (probably 14-16) year olds play Australian rules football, it was very exciting and I loved it, still don’t understand the rules but I enjoy the way the referee signals a score, absolutely exhilarating to watch the exuberance.
One note, on the way out of the Gardens some man stops us and says did you see the snake? No, I said, what snake, he points up to a very large limb running perpendicular to the ground with a massive snake, AJ uploaded it so you know I’m not exaggerating, a 12 foot snake, clearly a constrictor of some type, NOBODY seemed a bit bothered!! I grabbed AJ’s hand and said lets go!!!
The esplanade is quite nice, and they have a park that basically runs between the street and the bay all the way around so we walked through it and stopped for a cool down a few times before finally reaching the Supreme Court and Govt Building back on the East end of town. We found the walkway, just beyond the WWII tunnels they used to hide/store petrol for the war. We were told that Darwin was bombed no less than 70 times during the war and basically it had to be rebuilt from scratch after the war. It had to be rebuilt again when cyclone Tracy hit it on Christmas Eve 1974 and wiped out virtually everything, that didn’t stop them though and now it’s a thriving metropolis. Sorry for the diversion but I thought someone might appreciate all the reading we did during the course of our excursion.
We stopped at the Coffee House so AJ could wish a few folks good luck with the bar certification exam, and upload some pics from the past few days. We wrapped up there in an hour, after AJ quit sweating, and we headed back to the boat to watch the stragglers run to the boat at 7:45p, there’s always a few and it’s either that or wait for the casino to open for excitement. I really enjoyed Darwin and wouldn’t mind spending a bit more time down under, it’s a great place and I’m glad I had the opportunity to enjoy it with AJ, on to Bali!!! More soon.
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