One hour later

L: are we hardcore?
T: there's a difference between being hardcore and underprepared. But I guess if you consider taking everything that comes your way and not letting it get to you, I think THAT is hardcore.

Hell is a hot van full of mosquitos

Urgle. Nurgle. Blurgle.

These are the sounds of me waking up our horrendous night sleep. Night 1, NT camping adventure.

We hired a campervan at the recommendation of the nice lady in Darwin tourism. She said, yep well priced company, heard good things and don't go with Wicked Campers. We have ended up with a completely different campervan to what we expected. For the purposes of helping you understand, all the words in apostrophes are things that we were told the campervan HAS, that it clearly DOES NOT HAVE.

It's a 'new' Mitsubishi van with air conditioning and 'working sound system'. It sleeps two, has a gas stove fridge and 'microwave'. It is cheap with 'no hidden extras'. And most importantly it has 'fly screens'.

Really, the rest of the van features we could not care about not having. But people, I deeply, deeply regret driving out of that car yard without checking for BLOODY FLY SCREENS. Kakadu is mozzie central. Mozzies of Australia have their annual conferences here, to learn how to become more ruthless and more badass mozzies. They are huge. Not only are they itchy, but they HURT when they bite. They are, in a word, bastards.

We made dinner too late which meant we cooked in the dark, but here you might as well say 'in the mozzies.' because where there is dark, there is mozzies. We escaped to our van and managed to kill about 50 that had found their way in. Then we went to sleep. Half an hour later we woke drenched in our own sweat. The van was an unbearable hothouse. I jump at the window to open it for some fresh air.... For 5 minutes the window gives some relief. But then we realise, hell hath unleashed its fury on us. The whole van is FULL of mozzies. I make the trip to the front reception to ask how much a cabin costs for the night. $170. Not happening. Do you have any fly screens? No.
Toby has spent these 20 mins On a killing rampage and while he may not be the Crocodile Hunter let him from this time now be known as Tobias, Mozzie Slayer.

The night was spent waking every two hours to turn on the van and blast the air conditioning for half an hour. This morning is still, beautiful in Kakadu, and there is not a.... No wait, one little bastard just bit my arm!!!!!! $&!?!*#

So what to do today? Do we drive two hours back to darwin to sort this out ? Or do we just continue on in this bizarre fashion and come back with zero body fluid due to over sweating?

I have not the answer.



Ps. We did the Croc jumping cruise yesterday... It was AWESOME! I was so close to a massive croc I could have reached out to pat it.

Darwin

Have I only been here 2 days? It feels like an age. We spent Sunday morning eating breakfast at the Nightcliff markets. I had a strawberry and nutella crepe with extra cream (because calories don't count on a Sunday). Toby had an egg ham cheese and special chutney crepe. Yummmmmmmmmo.

We spent the day cruising around town lookin at stuff. We went to the museum which was fascinating. They have a Cyclone Tracy exhibit where you can go into a dark room and the play the sound of the cyclone loudly above you, imitating what it would be like to be trapped in a bunker. I thought, oh thus is ok for 10 minutes but I could not imagine what it would be like for hours and if the sound was the sound of your neighbourhood being ripped to shreds

I also found an irankandji jellyfish, and to give you an idea of size, here it is on the right next to a smallish box jellyfish.

We also caught up with JR And Robyn which was delightful.

I died and went to Bali

So apparently I'm in Bali. Okay, not REALLY. Technically I'm in Darwin, but staying in such an amazing house that it feels like a Balinese resort. The owners have been kind generous and warmly inviting - thanks gals! Their son B has taking instant admiration to Toby (who doesn't really) and we have spent a warm afternoon lazing about their house. 'house' doesn't really describe it though. 'villa' comes close. They designed their place themselves having been inspired by Balinese design and had most of the furniture, wood and tiles made in or imported from Java. More photos to come but here is the bathroom alone.

WHAAAAT?!

It's SO nice.

Ps. Yeah I know it's only day 1 of my trip and I'm already blogging, but I use writing to relax. So for all those 'stop being here and go and have fun' type people., don't worry: I certainly AM.

Tomorrow!

We leave tomorrow!  It's exciting.  We are doing last minute house cleans and sorting out all the stuff four our housie housesitter to move in to.  Op shop runs and vaccumming take up most of the day.


Saturdays forecast:
Melbourne:  17 and showers
Darwin: 32 and sunny!  Hooray!


In bad news, I think I have a cold.  I am going to try K's 'sweat it out' method which was recently successfully implemented by D!  Tonight, going to be in the sweats.  No cold will stop ME from all the fun in the world!


While we have a 23kg limit on our bags, we have only packed about 12kgs each, which I think is doing pretty well.  While I have tried to be frugal in the packing (sorry hair straightener you dont make the cut), I have been wheeling around my bag saying to Toby "I've packed too much!  I know I've packed too much!"  To be fair to myself, the bag is really only at half it's true capacity and there is still plenty of room for lots of fun bought items along the way.  However, I opened up the bag and got rid of ONE lousy tshirt which did not really redistribute much weight.  I know nobody needs as many clothes as I have packed, but I really seem to have a use for EACH one - "No, I NEED to walk around the Louvre in this dress!  It's the perfect Louvre dress!"  (?! tf ?!)

Ready for a holiday

I cleaned out the pantry today.

The pantry won the battle.

It's time for a holiday.

Note: this is my crying face, NOT my
Laughing face.

Cash strapped

We have been looking for a good budgeting app for a while and needed something simple. What we wanted to be able to do with it is set a daily spending amount and then if we didn't spend all of it, the app would rollover our leftovers to the following day. Most budgeting apps I find annoying, you have to input the amount plus tell it WHAT you spent it on so it can calculate pretty colorful graphs for you. I don't need that.




But we found this great little app Cash Strapped. You can set a daily, weekly or monthly budget allowance and it's as simple as 'add money' or 'take it away'.













I've been trialling it for a day and yesterday I gave myself $100. I spent money and had $9.43 remaining. This morning when I woke up I had $109.43 to spend for the day. That's perfect for how we want to sort our daily budget.


So there's my spruik, give it a try and see if you like it.

Does this work?

Testing a post from my phone. Not sure if this app is any good. Here is my hair drying naturally, a test run that will decide if we need the straightener.

Memories

Hello bloggies,


Today's challenge is: what to pack, what to throw away?
Do I REALLY need a hair straightener? Will I need a whole bottle of shampoo or a travel purse sized one? How much wood would a woodchop chop?


Thinking about future travel has made me all excited of memories of travel in the PAST.  For you interested bloglings, here are some pics of Tobes and I being overseas and being happy.

Here we are in a tuktuk in Bangkok.... But WHERE is Toby's beard?

The beaches of Israel...it was cold outside. It will NOT be cold in Darwin next week. Bring on 30 degrees!

And now we come to my favourite bit - FOODS I WILL EAT!!!  Todays food: Beer.  Does it count as a food group?  YES.  Beer in Belgium, Bath and Berteschgaden. Brill!!

More nomnoms

2.  New York.
After I recently came down off a health kick, my attitude to food has been a little bit more like:
"BRING ME ALL THE FAT IN THE LAND!!!"

Food that would usually have repulsed me and been replaced with greens and lentils is now looking more appealing than ever.  It is with this mentality that I will embrace the food of New York.