Australia, Darwin: Hot, Sticky Weather in the Tropical North

To get to Darwin, we had decided to fly from Cairns because it would be the fastest and easiest way for us to make our way there. Travelling by land was possible, but the bus journey between Cairns and Darwin would have taken at least a couple of days. Just when it was looking like the bus method was going to be our preferred method of travel, due to a lower price, Dan's friend Carl, who we had met up with in Cairns a few days earlier, had pointed us out to the fact that we could book domestic flights within Australia using airmiles from American Airlines. We did that and ended up getting our flight from Cairns to Darwin for less than $50 AUD each (£22, or $44 USD); that was much cheaper than the bus would have even cost us!

Our flights were arranged so that we flew on the same plane as Carl, and he drove us to the airport in Cairns. We all sat together on the plane, drinking beers and playing competitive games of Wheel of Fortune on the laptop. During the flight, Kyle noticed that one of the flight attendants seemed a bit surly and he mentioned it to Dan and Carl; it was Carl who first told Kyle he should get her to smile. When we were served our meals on the flight, Kyle mentioned the same thing to another, friendlier-looking flight attendant, asking if something was wrong or if the other flight attendant didn't want to be working our flight. The second flight attendant then told Kyle that she would give the three of us a free round of drinks if he could get her to smile.

We tried crocodile for the first time as a starter, and then we shared a plate of chicken schnitzel with chips

Kyle made up a story for the sourpuss flight attendant. He told her that his sister's name was also Tracey, that she had just gotten her hair cut really short like hers, and that it looked very nice. She smiled, then, and the other flight attendant saw her. Later in the flight, the one that hadn't been smiling was still smiling, and she came over to our row to talk to us. She said she had heard it through the grapevine that Kyle was dared to try and make her smile, and the reason she had seemed preoccupied was because she left the warmth and comfort of her swimming pool to go to work on an airplane; we understood why she wasn't so smiley at the beginning of the flight!

We had to drink our free round of beers quickly because the flight was due to land soon after we received them. In the airport, we collected our bags and caught a taxi to Darwin's town centre, where Carl had booked a triple room at The Cavenagh. He again offered us a place to crash and we gladly accepted it. For that first evening, we went to the bar at The Cavenagh and had several more beers whilst playing pool on an L-shaped table, and a few games of keno on the bar's electronic keno game. Kyle won over $80 AUD on the keno game and both Dan and Carl won games of pool against each other; Kyle didn't play pool.

Darwin was situated in the "Top End" of the Northern Territory, which was the northern, central part of Australia. The area was renowned for its tropical weather, rich indigenous culture, national parks and laid-back lifestyle, and we enjoyed exploring there for several days during our 6-week stint in the country. Our year of travelling was coming to the end and, with less than a month left, we still had the urge to see new places and sights, although we had started to lose interest in things that we felt we had already seen this year. Since the Northern Territory, the only region in Australia that is not a state, had more Aboriginal influence than the east coast, we wanted to learn more about their culture, knowing that the people had been inhabiting the land for the past thousands of years.

Throughout the year, temperatures average between 19 degrees Celsius, in the "colder" months, and 33 degrees Celsius, in the "warmer" months (between 66 degrees Fahrenheit to 91 degrees Fahrenheit), but it can become hotter or cooler than that, depending on Mother Nature's desires. In fact, when we were in the Darwin area, the temperature climbed to 39 degrees Celsius - 102 degrees Fahrenheit - a bitch of a heat with the humidity as high as it was there. The rainier season starts in December, the month we chose to visit, but it didn't rain much during the day; most of the rainstorms seemed to come in the evening.

On our first full day in Darwin, Carl picked up a rental car he had booked and he drove to a nearby beach. We weren't that keen to sit on the beach in 35 degrees Celsius (94 degrees Fahrenheit), humid weather, so we spent time catching up on our travel journal in coffee shops instead. With the weather being so hot, we also chose to sit in an air conditioned cinema to see "The Heartbreak Kid"; it gave us a couple of hours respite from the sun. Later in the day, when we met up again with Carl, we all saw "Beowulf" at the same cinema. We liked the film, but Carl didn't, mostly because he didn't realise it was going to be an animated film, albeit a dark and gruesome tale.

Dinner in Cairns with Carl was at Thailicious, a nice Thai restaurant on Mitchell Street, the main shopping, eating and entertainment street in town. The restaurant was open-air, which would have been nice in the winter, but tropical Darwin in summer was not a very cool place and we sweated during the meal. Our faces were glistening even more so because of the spicy food we ate, but we really enjoyed what we ate. For the main course, we shared a massaman curry and pad thai dish with Carl; for the starters, fish cakes, spring rolls and another one that we can't remember the exact name of were devoured. The one we forgot some kind of gold ships or golden bags snack. Oh, we can't forget the Singha beers - there weren't any days with Carl where we didn't drink at least a few beers and it was fitting to have Thai beer at a Thai restaurant.

When we were on our own during the day, we shared a couple of pastries from a Gloria Jean's Coffee cafe and each had an iced coffee there. Later in the day, we went to The Coffee Club and ordered a couple more iced coffees. There was actually a third coffee break for us that afternoon, at a bar near the cinema where we had planned to meet up with Carl to see "Beowulf", but we can't remember the name of the place and put it down to having had too much caffeine that day and a few too many beers that night.

After spending a day in the Darwin city centre, it was time to explore the surrounding area with a trip to Kakadu National Park; you can read about the day trip by clicking forward to the next travel journal entry. Kyle didn't go on that day trip; he left Dan and Carl to it, so he could relax and spend the day doing some writing in cafes around Darwin. There was a cafe across the street from The Cavenagh offering free wireless internet, so he went there and ordered a large, freshly squeezed orange juice to enjoy whilst checking emails and loading pictures onto the travel website. He made his way to a couple of other cafes during the course of the day to keep from going stir crazy in one. Towards the end of the afternoon, while he was in Global Gossip Internet Cafe, Dan and Carl returned from Kakadu and met up with Kyle there.

Global Gossip was on Mitchell Street and Kyle was busy finishing up a couple of travel journal entries that he had written throughout the day. Dan stayed with Kyle to finish up the stories and Carl headed back to The Cavenagh's bar for a drink. We finished the journals at around 10:00pm and headed to meet Carl at The Cavenagh, hoping to eat some food with him since we were both pretty hungry that late in the evening after not having any dinner. Carl hadn't eaten, either, and we talked him into sharing Domino's pizza with us, which we had delivered to the bar.

The pizza hit the spot and Dan and Carl played more games of pool whilst Kyle played a few games of keno. We had all planned to visit Litchfield National Park the next day and wanted to get an early start, so we headed to bed not long after finishing the pizza. In the morning, we ate breakfast at The Cavenagh before hitting the road. Carl somehow managed to get three free breakfasts due to problems we had experienced with the room's air conditioning and door lock on our first night there; we both ordered bacon, eggs and toast, but Carl just had a bacon sandwich because he doesn't like eggs.

When we returned from Litchfield National Park (you can read about Litchfield if you skip ahead a couple of journal entries), we were all famished and ready to eat some dinner. Carl suggested we try Tim's Surf 'N' Turf, a restaurant behind our hotel; it was listed in our Lonely Planet guide and had a good review, so we agreed. The food there was great and we really appreciated Carl treating us to a nice dinner. We tried crocodile for the first time as a starter, and then we shared a plate of chicken schnitzel with chips; we had some customary beers as well. After eating, we headed to a bar on Mitchell Street to have drinks.

At the bar, Dan ordered a large fish bowl drink and we ended up sharing it because it was huge, and expensive! He put down a $10 AUD deposit on the drink, which would have been returned to him had he not forgotten to turn in the drink glass when we left. Oh well, we were all feeling fairly tipsy by that point and we went to another bar to have more beers, and more beers, before, well, more beers. Did we tell you that our time with Carl brought flashbacks of reunions we had in the United States during the summer, when many or most of the reunion meetings seemed to be alcohol-fuelled and lasting until the wee hours of the morning?

On the morning of the last of our five days in Darwin, we decided to relax again without doing very much. Carl headed for the beach and to visit some of the surrounding area in the car he had hired, but Dan and Kyle ended up sleeping in for a little while, trying to recover from a late night the evening before. When we finally woke up and became motivated, we headed downstairs to do laundry and have breakfast. The Cavenagh's breakfasts were really tasty and we were happy to be eating there again. Dan chose eggs benedict that morning and Kyle ate pancakes; we devoured those whilst drinking iced coffees.

When our laundry was finished, we pulled the clothes out of the extremely dirty and disgusting washing machine and took them upstairs to the room so they could dry out during the course of the afternoon. As soon as the clothes were spread around the room, we headed out of the hotel towards the cinema to see "Bee Movie", which had opened a couple of days earlier. On the way to the cinema, we stopped at a post office to send out Christmas cards to our friends and family members. If you didn't get one this year, it's because you haven't posted enough comments on this travel journal to let us know you are actually reading it!

The day was very hot already and we appreciated the comfort of the cool cinema when we arrived there. The Coffee Club on Mitchell Street was next on our agenda because we needed to back up some photographs from our trip. We shared a filo there, which was a savoury pastry snack, and decided to walk around Darwin's historic district afterwards. On the way to the historic district, we walked along Darwin's esplanade; it led us down to a small beach along the coast before winding around to the historical part of town.

We admired the architecture of some of the old buildings in the historical district; the ruins of the old Palmerston Town Hall were pretty cool and there was a nice little theatre that used to be a general store called Browns Mart. After a walk around the city centre in the heat and humidity of the afternoon, we headed back to The Cavenagh to watch a little more of the DVD film "Hollywoodland", one that we had tried to finish since starting it when we were in Palm Cove almost a week earlier. It was nice and cool in our air conditioned hotel room and we savoured the break from the sun.

Dinner that night was with Carl at Hog's Breath Cafe, a restaurant that had won many awards, each of which we felt it shouldn't have won. Our experience was not a great one because of appalling service throughout our meal. We had to wait ages to have our drink orders taken and even longer to get the drinks; also, when we ordered the food, a hickory smoked steak and mashed potatoes for each of the three of us and chicken nachos as a starter, the steaks ended up being brought to the table a few seconds before the nachos, which we ended up sending back since we had wanted them as a starter about twenty minutes earlier. When we got back to the hotel after eating, we watched some TV and Carl went to sleep.

A quick and cheap breakfast was on the cards on our last morning in Darwin, so we went to McD's; we really hate to write about all of our visits to fast food chains, but we found the occasions occurring increasingly because our travel funds were running out and we seemed to be getting addicted to the food, which was a terrible, but undeniable, reality of the latter part of our trip. On the way to the fast food joint, we bumped into Carl; he had left the hotel earlier before either of us had even woken up, and he had just finished some shopping at a nearby Woolworth's. He gave us a 1-litre bottle of iced coffee drink that he had bought for us at the supermarket and we quickly consumed it that morning.

After eating, we headed to Gloria Jean's Coffee to work on the travel journal. We didn't have to order and pay for any coffees since Carl had hooked us up with quite a bit. After an hour or so at Gloria Jean's, we walked across the street to Global Gossip Internet Cafe and uploaded more photos from our trip to make sure they were on the internet for our friends and family to see. We had to check out of the hotel by noon and we walked back there just before 12:00pm to gather our bags and meet up with Carl. The hotel called a taxi for us and we all headed to the airport together, eager for our flight to Alice Springs. Carl had planned on visiting Alice Springs at the same time as us and all three of us again booked ourselves onto the same flight using OneWorld Alliance airmiles.