Where did we leave off?
Darwin.
We arrived pretty late, and didn't get to the hostel until about 8pm. At which hour, it was still bloody hot out. Should have been a warning. Any rate, we finally had a nice, quiet room, with concrete walls and metal doors. No noise! And A/C! Yay!
Darwin is small, and the area we were in was geared towards our age group, so everything was open late and it was a bit seedy.
Anyway, the next morning we got up and decided after the wholly unsatisfactory breakfast that the hostel laid out, that coffee was needed. Had breakfast at this cute little place called Banyan Cafe for the giant tree canopying the patio. Then we decided to walk around and see the park and whatnot. Now, it probably was partly that our bodies were not accustomed to the climate, but after 2 hours of sweating and guzzling water, we had made it across the park, and were in desperate need of a nap. It was so hot and humid, I thought I was going to be sick.
That day was a bust.
The next day we went to Crocodylus. It's a crocodile farm and museum. They also have a small (I mean it, small) zoo. While we were there the guide made mention of how the weather was good lately, and how lucky we were that we were only at 80% humidity.
So, we saw the giant pond with the 77 young crocodiles, the 24 breeding pens, the ponds with almost every other kind of crocodile and alligator, and the 3 ponds with the juvenile crocs. I think they have a total of some 9,000.
Danielle got to feed the big one, measuring at 15' 10". They put a bit of chicken on a string and then tie it to a stick, and you basically fish for a croc. Then we got to hold a baby, and be tourists and take our picture with it.
After that we had lunch. Let me take a moment here to talk about the food here. It's basically the same, but they get inventive with what they put on it. For instance, a typical burger comes with pineapple, a beet or two, and shredded carrot. They regularly put an egg on their pizza, and sometimes even include peas in their fajitas.
We then walked around the zoo, which was really good despite it's size. The big cats had nice big enclosures, and it was wire on the back with glass on the front, so you could actually see them up close. AND, their wombat was awake! And doing stuff, okay, eating. But still. He was right up near the fencing, so I reached in and illegally touched his bum.
After we were done with Crocodylus, we shopped around a bit, and then called it a day.
Our last night in Darwin, which of course was a friday night, we were awoken at 3am to someone next door trying to beat down the door. I thought about going out there and telling them off. Seriously, this building is a fortress, and I can hear them hitting their door. I didn't though, which was good, because some guy from down the hall came out and started getting on the first guy's case. They bickered for a few minutes, and then we hear what sounds like slapping, then yelling, then some girl going on about all the blood! Nice. So I wait until it dies down, because now that we're both awake, we both really need to use the little girls room, which is of course only accessible by passing the room in question. It's quiet, so I poke my head out, and there's bouts of blood on the floor and smeared on the wall. I'm a pansy about this, so of course now I feel like puking. No one's in the hall, so we dash to the toilets and back. As we get back, the guy who did the hitting has gotten the night manager (finally! what's the point of having someone there if they're not going to do anything?) and they're cleaning up the hallway. After going back to bed, we then hear the next door girl crying in the hallway about how she didn't know what was going on. O_O
The people here are just freaking crazy, as if the above isn't evidence enough. While we waited for the bus, we were also treated to a group of drunks screaming f--- this and f--- that, and the woman in the group danced around in the street and offered her, ahem, services to every male. Then this other guy started blatantly patronizing her, and when she yelled at him for touching her water bottle but let him have the newspaper, he went out into the street and began thanking God for it. He also pointed out that the carton of milk he was drinking was dribbling on the sidewalk, and to be careful of it. Yeah, I think there's something in the overabundance of water.