Charming Santiago Chile, I Was En-route to Darwin

I arrived in Darwin yesterday afternoon after a 3 days flight from Costa Rica, as with all flights they are shite, I am really starting to hate flying, they have back breaking seats, they have plastic food, they are always late, they are run by aliens making us all suffer for ruining the planet. But on this flight to Darwin i was forced to fly via Santiago in Chile as all the flights through the USA were full and very expensive, I can tell you that flying south saved about $10,000. You may think i am joking but I am certainly not, the cost using the USA was almost $25,000 and using Chile to fly through cost $14,478. This is a crazy amount to charge for a seat that isn't even comfortable.

Anyway I arrived in Santiago at 2.00am, i had to get a taxi into towna dn luckily i found a nice genuine honest taxi driver and as we travelled into the sity he rang a hotel and found it was full and then he rang another and got me a room, pretty cheap at $69 a night, he took me inside and maybe got a bonus for bringing me in but that is OK, he even arranged to pick me up later and take me back to the airport, which is OK by me, I had to pay him in Dollars as I didnt want to buy any local crap money, the Peso, and i was able to survive all day eating and drinking using plastic and I walked around a bit, i found the local art gallery but they wouldn't take plastic so i walked to a castle on a hill,

Castillo Hidalgo




The Gardens of The Castle




it was sunny and not windy and i enjoyed the pleasant weather, even though it is winter here, from the hill with the castle i could see all of Santiago, that was visible in the fog and I was shocked to see some monster mountains that were almost hidden in the fog, they were huge and snow-capped, I was told there were lots of skiers in town, taking my bedrooms obviously. I walked around and found some lovely flowers in bloom which is crazy as it is winter, the temperature was about 15C during the day, not sure what it got down to at night, i think i saw 6C, but can you belive there were hummingbirds flying all around the place, they wer fighting over the flowers, it was so funny and so entertaining, i spent 3 hours watching them, they were tiny as normal but they had this crazy cap, in a brilliant flaming red/gold, depending on which way the sun hit it,





an unbelivable display of nature at its best, the only thing was we were in the middle of the city surrounded by 5 million folks all doing there best to survive and destroy the planet. Just a little chink of light at the end of the ecological tunnel. Darwin was sunny warma nd quite refrreshing actually when i got off the plane, it was almost nice to get back to, but as my wife willnot be joining me for the next few months while she gets her visas and passports for herself and the little tinker then, I am going to be miserable.

Missing another Wedding Anniversary

Well this last week I had to make amends and apologise to my wife again for going to miss my forthcoming Wedding Anniversary. I think i have missed 3 of the last 4 and will be missing the next one on the 16th of August. So we decided to take a chilly holiday to the swiss alps, I never told anyone and we just went off without a word and crossed town and up the mountains to the not so swiss town of Heredia and to the swiss style hotel, El Tirol,altitude 8000 Ft. it looks like it was built maybe 20-30 years ago by some swiss folks and they actually made a very nice job of it, the only problem of taking a swiss style holiday up there , it is cold, well actually fresh but after a week in the humidity of Costa Rica, it felt bloody freezing.

Swiss style Hotel El Tirol



We arrived in the afternoon to see the skies clearing after it being overcast all morning, we had brought all the binoculars and my digital SLR, so we went for a walk and I found the hummingbird feeding gardens, there were about 5 species of hummingbirds fighting like crazy about who would sit at the top table, so to speak, it was great and I spent at least 30 minutes watching them, then i was dragged away to go down a trail to find the river and the long walk around the area, we saw nothing in the woods as it was pretty late about 5pm and it was overcast again and we had gone maybe only 800 yards( Meters )and a huge thunderstorm broke out around us, it was pouring rain like crazy, as it does in the rainy season, I was miserable as i was brave and had gone out without a jacket, i was soaked to the skin, cold and feeling stupid for not putting on my rain jacket. We went back to the cabin at the hotel and jumped into bed all three of us, and watched to some TV and ate snacks we took with us, we had marshmallows, potato chips, corn chips with salsa, it was great,

Our Little Cabin



We got ready about 8 to go and have dinner in the hotel, but we were so full that we just drank beer and the little tinker had chicken nuggets, swiss style of course. We did relent after about an hour, we started feeling peckish as you do when you are drinking and I saw the desert menu and it had apple strudel on it, i had to have it and it was the best i have eaten in a long time, Jenny had the Crepe suzettes, which were fun as the waiter did the sauce in front of us on a trolley, the flaming alcohol thing, you know, the sauce was average but well worth the entertainment value. They also had live music, a saxaphone player, doing some classic jazz stuff but alos some crazy jazz stuff, then a guitar player who was only doing psanish stuff, i like it but in small doses, he grated on me after about an hour at which time he left, hurrah, but all in all while we sat in front of a log fire and drank beer and ate fancy food we had a fantatic time, even though we did get drowned in the rain, I leave Friday back to the land of beer and barbecues

Possibly the musicians ( Nah, i just downloaded it from the net)

Jetlag The Hidden Killer

Australia is a long way from anywhere, I hadn't ever taken trips that far with so many flights before, the return trip is a horror story of normally 2 overnight flights and a long day afterwards in total about 39 hours, but this return was worse, I was flying home to Costa Rica to take a well earned rest and i was flying with my wife and little girl who were with me in Darwin, checking out houses and schools and stuff, mostly stuff like shopping and visiting national parks and beaches. Well we started flying the first leg at 1.40am a miserable start to anything, and then we found out our next flight had been delayed 5 hours then 6 hours and finally 7 hours before we flew over night again, we were flailing about my now, the little girl was Ok as she can sleep anywhere anytime, but me and Jenny were zombies, we landed in the USA and then tried ot flind a non full flight home, we were stuck, the next flight was from Los Angeles to Denver, then overnight to Costa Rica from Denver, this was getting tiresome, we arrived the next morning at 6am, 14,000 miles later, looking like shit and feeling worse, man Australia is a long way from anywhere. It is 4 days since we arrived and we are all falling about, sleeping anytime and not at night, i hate Jetlag, I really hate jetlag and flying, if we can fly to the moon why can't we fly to Oz in an hour or so, I will have to stop flying or something as it extracts my very reason to live, soon it will be all over, or am i trying to delude myself, probably as usual

The Last Crazy Weekend of Travelling for The Family

This last weekend was the last for us as a family for a while, we all travel home to Costa Rica for a holiday for me and passport stuff and visas and much much more for my wife. So we decided that we had to see as much as possible. So Saturday we went to the northern tip of the darwin area a place called Gunn Point, maybe something to do with guns maybe not but now there is nothing there at all, just a few old farts desperate to avoid the tourists and drink themselves silly. it was a crappy drive along 25Km of dirt roads and as this country is pretty flat it was a boring drive, we arrived to find the road ends before the tip and you have to drive along the beach to see the end, I asked an old fart who was sitting in the shade drinking i think, as i could smell his breath from 50 paces away and he drivelled on about the mud and people getting their cars stuck in the mud and having to abandon them to the tides and sea, this stopped me thinking about driving along the beach, i didnt want to get stuck in the mud and it was a long walk back to Darwin. The beach was nice and sandy with lots of crazy looking shells, the mangrove trees had a few birds in them but nothing to speak of, there were a few Whistling kites hanging around on the beach, looking as though they had found some dead things but it was too far for me to bother going to look, we had a small picnic and a drink and headed back to Darwin feeling a bit cheated, there should have been a tourist sign up stating " Nothing of any Interest to be Seen Here", at the start of that dirt road.

Lovely Silent Beach With No Tourists




Sunday was a slog, we had to drive 300Km to get to KAKADU National Park, this is a pinnacle of the national parks the whole country and was where Crocodile Dundee was filmed, it is a remote place and we made a tactical error in trying to go the short route and found out it was a dirt road with some deep river crossings, maybe 2 feet deep at the worst and I was regretting that mistake, anyway we persevered and arrived maybe an hour late and missed the 11.30 am boat cruise on the Yellow Water Billabong, so we decided to go to the JIM JIM Falls, this is possible the tallest waterfalls in Australia at 215 meters high. the drive again was on dirt road and i am beginning to hate dirt roads. The fine powder on the roads form corrugations that vibrate out your tooth fillings, and the car pulls in the fine dust into the car getting in your nose and in your hair, we were stopped at a check post and the park ranger told that we had to lock the car into 4 Wheel drive and go slowly, once we set off I realised why, it was a sand track at the bottom of the valley that probably floods during the rainy season, deep sand and the road was so twisty and turny, through little creeks and over huge humps designed to slow you down as it was single track, the sand was so deep that the wheels would sink and turn aimlessly until the you had dug down to more firmer material, i was scared again.

Dirt Road in Hell to Jim Jim Falls




It took about 30 minutes to drive the 10 Km to the car park and then you had this crazy walk that was meant to be only easy but turned into a rock climb over mountains of rockfall material. The little girl thought it was great but i was worn out lifting her about and trying to let her walk while i was skipping across all the difficult stuff trying to keep her safe.

Climbing over Rock Fall Material




This took us almost 2 hours to make it to the base of the falls, the falls were almost dry which i expected at this time of the dry season. but the ravine was fantastic and the cliffs were overhanging a wee bit too much for comfort, i felt almost that they could collapse in at anytime, but I am a whiny scaredy cat.

Dry waterfall




Overhanging ravine walls




We had a picnic well away from the base of the falls as they were another 200 meters away over some silly huge boulders that I didn't want to climb or put the other two with me through torture to say they reached the base of the falls. Once i realised we were running out of time I hurried everyone to get a move on and try and be as quick as possible for the last Boat cruise on yellow water at 4 pm, the walk back was as slow as coming actually slower as we were getting tired by now. Again the drive through the sand was terrible and slow and once we got onto the dirt road i was driving like a bat out of hell, too fast for dirt and we slid once straight along towards a ditch even though the i was turning the wheel. but we managed to get to the main road with 15 minutes to spare, i then floored this thing as was doing about 100mph, to get the cruise, I arrived with 5 minutes to spare and found the cruise was at 4.30pm, I gave out a little sigh of relief as there was a queue of folks trying to get on the last cruise also. It was damned expensive at $70 each for a 2 hours slow boat ride through the weeds.

Slow boat in Kakadu Pary, yellow Water Billabong




Sunset at Yellow Water




We got on the cruise and had to wait for a while and we set off with a humourous guide telling a few silly gags about the crocodiles and the floods they had last year, when crocs were swimming about the flooded hotel where you get the tickets from. Then I realised he knew nothing about bird watching as he only mentioned the large birds, Sea Eagles, Stork, Egret, all the small birds, not one mention of them, he was just a cowboy from the local area.

Two Majestic Sea Eagles




Big Crocodile




Brolga



Jabiru



Azure Kingfisher




Anyway there are not many words with which to describe the bird life other than Amazing, I save the word awesome for events like Aliens landing or Comets swishing through the lower atmosphere, maybe even having to pay $25 a gallon for gas. but not much else. The birds were there in there tens of thousands, as it is the dry season all the small water holes dry up and it concentrates the birds into the main permanent water holes like this one, it had 30,000 whistling ducks, they really do whistle, and many other water fowl, pygmy geese, actually smaller than the ducks. egrets and storks and Cranes of all descriptions, many many pied geese, just too many for description, the most stunning was the Azure Kingfisher, like a flying Jewel. We saw a large croc doing nothing, it seemed all too short, that was because it was all too short, they took us back early and we left late meaning we only got 1 1/2 hours and not 2 hours, the shorter trip is $20 cheaper and i was almost going to ask for a refund but we were running so late, we thought we should have a dinner before we left the hotel so we ordered fish and chips being imaginative and as there being no other place to eat for another 200 Km we didnt have much choice. we waited and waited and waited and my wife eventually through starvation just went and stole someone elses food off the counter and said it was ours, it was delicious but we were now 4 hours from home at 8.30pm, i could see a miserable long drive coming, we set off and i dont like going fast at night here as it is pretty dangerous, there are wild pigs, wild dogs, kangaroos and even wild horses, but after about 2 hours i was starting to fall asleep at the wheel, i stopped the car and got out to stretch my legs and wake up to find the most crystal clear sky with the best view of the milky way i have ever seen, it was brilliant and panoramic, almost awesome(Need the Aliens), I even woke up the little girl from her solid sleep to look also, she said wow and then fell asleep again. I then managed to drive all the way back without falling asleep again and even got home just before midnight and staggered into bed for my 6am wake up for work, but all in all it was a pretty fantastic trip and one that I would recommend to anyone coming up to this part of Northern Territory in Australia. Monday morning the news on the radio mentioned another death on the roads of greater Darwin, a wild horse had jumped out in front of a car with 6 people in it and killed the driver, just goes to show, some days your lucky and then your luck runs out.

Australian Entertainment

I was surprised when i first arrivbed in Australia to find that prostitution was legal and quite open, with brothels setup in out of town areas and even protitutes advertising there activities in the local papers, my wife was reading out some of the adverts in this weeks paper, it was hilarious as the girls all wanted to sound like fresh faced young sexy things that hadn't been on the game for years and years, like "swedish student just arrived in town, likes to have fun", this would have had me rolling about the floor if it wasnt for the reality of it all, but looking at some of the bushmen about town, you would have to be pretty desperate to have one these monsters as a customer.