THE HONEYMOONERS

After a 48-hour train ride from Adelaide to Darwin (made $200 cheaper by acquiring some fake student IDs in Bangkok), we arrived at the Top End of Australia, Darwin. When we woke the next morning, our own Real World began. We were picked up first along with two other girls that were staying at our hostel. So, now we're up to five, including our guide. We swung around and picked up another, then another, and then 3 more at the tour operator's office, where we had to pay and pick up our sleeping bags before all 10 of us embarked on our 3day/2night camping tour in the bush of Australia within the country's largest National Park, Kakadu.

The characters were:

Brad and Amanda: Two yuppy honeymooners from the USA.
Oliver: a German who, as he would say, is "making" his doctorate in physics and is on holiday from his internship in Canberra where he spends time splitting atoms (no, we don't know what that means)
Cira and Pauline: Two fiery Catholic Irish girls who loved to curse and smoke cigarettes, but were engaging from the start.
Diana: Nearly 6 feet, this bi-polar Swiss chick was simply wack. At any time, she was liable to bust out a song or conversely, not talk for hours. Can't write too much more about her because she was so mysterious, but I will say her hands were bigger than Oronde Gadsden's (holla to the Dolphins love)
Geoff, Charlie and Adam: Three English dudes from about 100 miles north of London, who are traveling together. Geoff is a wanna be playboy, wanna be tour guide, wanna be something. But, to this credit, he initiated all the craziness that happened - flirting, farting, drinking, etc.
Charlie is a squeaky Englishman with a real quirky sense of humor. Them too, Geoff and Charlie, were very much similar to Penn and Teller, feeding of each other and in their apperance as well. And Adam was a carpenter/handyman who was arrested "drink driving" as he would say, and faced a court day the day after we were to return back to Darwin.
Jack: Our tour guide, an ex-Army, controlling personality with a heavy dose of indeciveness.

Our first stop was the Crocodile Park, where we played with deadly snakes and then went aboard a boat on a crocodile infested river to feed the crocs. Somewhat unsettling, but never felt unsafe. We then continued on our 3hr drive East to Kakadu National Park. We traveled in a beat-up old Land Rover with no air conditioning, no radio and two benches in the back, 4 to each bench. And a trailer hitched on the back carrying our everything - food, clothes, tents, sleeping bags, etc. After a brief stop for a self-made lunch, we 'set up camp' in the early afternoon so that we could spend the day hiking and swimming in plunge pools that 'hopefully' didn't have crocodiles. After Amanda got the fire started for the group, we enjoyed Kangaroo bits, veggies and spuds (potatoes) for dinner, all cooked on Amanda's fire. The stars were absolutely incredible. The Southern Cross (the stars on the Australian flag) is almost always visible, but was so bright along with the rest of the solar system. In fact, we ate Milky Ways while looking at the Milky Way.

The next day we packed up camp about an hour before sunrise so that we could head to our next site. So by 5.30am we had already been up for almost an hour and already had a fire-cooked breakfast as well. We 4-wheel drove to the next site. Each time we got in the car, it was a minimum 45min drive. Our next camp site, though, offered toilets and showers - what a treat. We again set up shop early in the day so not to have to do it in the dark and headed out for our day of hiking, swimming and sitting.

In classic Real World fashion, there was drama on Day 2 as our controlling and scatter-brained guide basically denied Amanda (and me b/c I stayed with her) the second half of a hike because he felt we wouldn't have enough time to get thru "his" day since Amanda wasn't able to hike as fast as the group. He was completely wrong, both about his timing (we had so much time, in fact, that we noshed on fruit before the next hike) and about singling out Amanda because of her foot condition.

But, hey, what's a Real World without a little crying and animosity. And just as MTV's Real World is filled with twists and turns, so was ours. First we liked the guide, then we didn't. First, we didn't know about our roomates and later we formed friendships, close now with Cira and Pauline, the two Irish girls who we'll hopefully always stay in touch with. Nonetheless, the waterfalls, the camping, the wildlife was an experience we'll never forget.

Click here for pics of Kakadu Dreams