46 Hours

Well... we're back! But not for long... 46 hours actually. Cayley and I have 46 hours in Adelaide to catch up on emails, pay bills, do laundry, pack, and grocery shop for the next adventure. Let me catch you up on the last one.

What a time!

Well, we started out with a 24 hour train ride on the famous Ghan to Alice Springs. We packed for Darwin = bloody hot. Alice Springs was....NOT! So with the 2 sweaters...and one extra I brought as a stow away unbeknownst to my traveling companion (thank goodness!), we bundled up and braved the daaaaang cold.

We went to the Camel Cup!! Woo hoo! It was hilarious. Camels running everywhere, people bouncing higher, and winners falling. Okay, so first race, a girl won, but accidentally and disgracefully dismounted her camel just after the finish line. That's right, she FELL OFF! Oh gosh.. I laughed so hard! Next race was the honeymooner race. Camels start sitting, run half way around the track, stop, sit down again, and the riders pick up their wives, the camel jumps up and they finish the race. The first camel didn't stop at halfway. He went BARRELLING through the crowd of people to the finish line. Again - I howled with laughter aka my "Bauer Honk", which by the way is a dominating sound in the background of all the videos I took.

Well, after a day at the markets and hanging out at the kangaroo-joey rescue center (we got to cuddle all the baby joey's. - mine, Jimmy was only 4 months old), back on the train. Another 24 hour train ride to Darwin. Darwin was hot hot! FINALLY!!!

So, we didn't have a hostel booked. We hoped that it would be like everywhere else and there would be a whole bunch of them lined up at the station ready to take you home...Not the case. Pretty much every bed in Darwin was booked. Two guys came from one hostel though, looking for 2 other girls who had reserved beds...they didn't show up. No, we didn't pretend to be them, although, it did cross our minds, haha. Either way, we asked if we could catch a ride to town with them so they didn't go back empty handed. The city was 26km away and everyone was expected to pay for the shuttle $10 we didn't have. So we managed a free ride - and turns out they had beds for us for one night anyways. God was on the lookout.

We got to go to a place called Deckchair Cinemas. It was a cinema on right on the beach with all these deckchairs (thank you captain obvious) and we watched a movie! They provided mozzie repellant and pillows. It was cool and we could bring our own picnic.

We did get to go on a tour one day. We went to a lot of waterfalls and got to swim underneath them. We also saw JUMPING CROCODILES! It was cool. So we had Cayley on the top of the boat taking pictures with rapid fire and me on the bottom of the boat taking videos. It was cool! Crocs are big and scary!

We also got to go to a fish feeding place. There are hundreds of fish and they give you bread to feed them. You put your hand just under the water and the fish come and suck the bread out of your fingers, it feels so weird. There were lots of different kinds of fish. Some were a 1.5 meters long - I think that's a big fish.

God knows we're living on a dime and was most definitely watching out for us. God is a great backpacker - did you know that? He knows how to do it cheap. There was a place where we could get great meals for $1. A nice dish (curry, lasagna, lamb casserole - whatever your liking) with a salad for so stinkin' cheap. Heck, we couldn't even cook for that price. It definitely beat PB&J. I think I'm going to vomit peanut butter by the time I get home. Don't get me wrong - I do love peanut butter, but we're pushing it to new levels I think.

Darwin is known for their sunsets...I think. Either way, they were great, although I'm not so sure they compare to Alberta skies. Our sunsets and dancing northern lights is probably as good as it gets. But we managed to see an incredible sunset go down on the water as we were walking along the beach...my Cayley and I...aww, how romantical. The markets were on that night, so the place was packed out. People bring everything for anything. It was like anyone who had food to sell, junk to sell, or a dog you could pet, they brought it. Cayley and I were in our glory either way.

The week consisted of lots of sunburning and reading. It was lovely. It was much more of a holiday than Perth was. Perth was adventure. Darwin was relaxing. I'm sure there is much I left out, but that's to give you an idea of our trip for those of you who keep telling me you're living through my blog. Don't want to disappoint those and don't want to bore the others.

Right Where You Are

"And don't be wishing you were someplace else or with someone else. Where you are right now is God's place for you. Live and obey and love and believe right there. God, not your marital status, defines your life. Don't think I'm being harder on you than on the others. I give this same counsel in all the churches. "

1 Corinthians 7:17

He knows what He's doing.

Ever Held a Wombat?

**If you would like to look at pictures - go to the link on the side of the page. Cayley and Megan's Australia Pictures link. Pretty self-explanatory.**

I have returned from the red desert. We were correct...there was nothing but red sand. In hopes to make this shorter and still fill you in on our journey, I'm going to make a list. It will kind of go in chronilogical order if I can remember that way.

1. There's a town we stopped at on the way called Cook. Population 6. That's right. Only 6 people. 3 run the gift shop, 2 sell sausage and onion buns, and the other one was out of town.

2. Rottnest Island. Our alarm didn't go off. We were extremely rushed and nearly late to catch our shuttle at 7am. We took the ferry across the Indian Ocean to this island. We rented bikes. We started out with a lovely tandem bike with a basket however, could not make it work. It would have been a loooong day had we carried on with it. After our first crash, (Cayley was on the back and managed to sneak away with minor injuries) I walked away, luckily, with most damage to my pants and a bruised ankle. So we traded big Bertha in for two young bucks. Cayley's named, Rosie Montegra and mine named, Violet Montee. They did us well for the day. Our 16 km trek around the gorgeous island was a lot of fun. We managed to stop at a few beaches to get a bit burnt.

3. My toothbrush was stolen from the bathroom.

4. Caversham. Cayley and I took the bus out to Caversham Wildlife Park however, we somehow missed our stop. We ended up in the middle of nowhere and had to figure out how to take the bus back to the stop that we didn't know how to find the first time. After awhile, we made it. We arrived at the front gate where there is a courtesy phone to call the park and they come pick you up. Just our luck, the courtesy phone was broken...and actually completely gone. Luckily, we had our mobile and they came to pick us up. At the park, we saw A LOT of animals. Cayley held a wombat named Doza, we saw kangaroos with joeys, koalas and a weeeee little baby one, and WE RODE A CAMEL!!!! It was great!

5. Crazy Road Trip! We met 2 girls from our hostel and decided to rent a car and go on a road trip. So our fancy little Hyundai carried us to Wave Rock. A giant rock that looks like a wave - and then we got lost in the bush. The next day, we went to the Sand Dunes and The Pinnacles. At the sand dunes, it was funny. Everything looked like Napoleon Dynamite when his gramma goes to the sand dunes. There were motorcycles and quads everywhere. We rented sand boards and went sand boarding. It was fun. At the Pinnacles, (a place with all these different sized rocks) and took lots of pictures. Oh yeah! There was chunks of the road that had no speed limit - so it was great..he he. All in all the road trip was good, but we just about ran out of gas twice. The gas light came on and we still had 40 km to go. We made it, luckily. And the next day the gas light came on at 70km - thankfully at 50 km a gas station showed up.

6. The hostel had a hot tub.

7. I wish there were pictures for this but they don't seem to be working. I think it must be blogger. If I'm wrong, and somebody else can load pictures, leave me a comment and tell me what you're doing different. Thanks

I think those were most of the high points. There were many funny moments as well. We definitely felt the wrath of my bad travel karma time and time again though. Cayley is going to realize not all traveling is this chaotic once she travels with someone else. Nothing seems to be an easy road for us but we're always in good spirits. She keeps me in check and I thank God for her being here.

I Spy With My Little Eye

Cayley: "I spy with my little eye something that is......RED!"

Megan: "The sand?"

Cayley: "Awww...man, how'd you guess?"

Megan: "Just lucky I guess.. Alright, my turn... I spy with MY little eye something that is....also red."

Cayley: "Oh gosh..this is so hard, I don't know. I'm just not sure. Okay, I'm just guessing, but is it.....the sand?"

Megan: "Awww...I thought that was a hard one! But you got it!"

Cayley: "Okay, my turn............."

Now, this is going to be the on-going joke for about the next 6 weeks. Tomorrow, my great friend Cayley and I are embarking on our excursion. We are leaving Adelaide to to explore the rest of the country. How are we doing this? Well, we're poor.. So the train of course. You might be thinking to yourself that it's not that big of a deal, however, Australia is BIG. It is a LARGE chunk of land. Our first journey is to Perth. 39 hours on a train....straight. We'll be heading across red desert...That's about all there is in between. A lot of boring 'I Spy'. Lucky for us, Cayley inherited 'travel Guess Who' and 'UNO: "Cars" (the movie)' for her birthday. That should take care of an hour or so. But anyhow. I'll be outta here for a bit. Our first journey is about 10 days so I'll update on the train ride when I get back.