Stuart Highway into the Center

After our tour of the nearby national parks, we left Darwin for the last time, heading south on the Stuart Highway (the path of which was originally developed when a telegraph system connecting southern Oz to the north was being put into place) into the Red Centre of Australia.

 

Strangely, it was only on our third pass through the tiny town of Adelaide River that someone finally mentioned to us that the buffalo from the movie Crocodile Dundee was a resident of this area and is now stuffed for posterity and lives in a roadside bar. (Though clearly I didn't remember the buffalo from Crocodile Dundee, or I wouldn't have been surprised to see a buffalo at Mary River.)

 

On our way south, we hit several hotsprings (this one called Bitter Springs, though it was sweetly warm and soothing),

checked out the huge, rounded boulders of Karlu Karlu,

camped at night at outback cattle stations (this pic a view of Banka Banka cattle station at sunrise), including our first experience of sleeping under the stars in traditional swag,

and ate most of our meals cooked on "the barbie." Oh so Australian!

As you may know, Australia has a shocking variety and concentration of dangerously venomous spiders and snakes, and we also got some exposure to those creepy crawlies. A park ranger who had just finished telling us a bit about the old telegraph station we were visiting pointed out this spider and gleefully said it was capable of killing a person.

And keeping lethal snakes in glass cages seems to be a favorite hobby of a lot of the roadhouse owners on the Stuart Highway. This python isn't venomous, though.

Then there was the expected (but still startling) assortment of completely wacky stuff that one tends to find at very rural rest stops in the States, as well. Some of my favorites were the ode to the Pink Panther (including the one in a plane in the upper left of the frame) at Larrimah...

...the every-surface-covered-with-stuff-stapled-to-the-wall-by-travelers at the iconic Daly Waters Pub...

...the Roswell-like, alien-obsessed Wycliffe Well...

...and the massive Aboriginal sculptures at Aileron. (Those are normal-sized trees in the background, to give you an idea of the scale.)

Somehow, three days on the road just flew by, and not only because of the Northern Territory's experiment with no speed limit on much of the Stuart Highway.

The road was often so empty that we stopped to take pictures playing in it. S got this one of me mid-cartwheel. The one where all twelve of us on the tour at that point pretend to be roadkill is a little disturbing, so I'll spare you that. But we had fun.

Kakadu National Park

Next up, gorgeous, sprawling Kakadu National Park. SR looked right at home hiking among the gaggle of young beauties in our tour group.

 

We hiked up to an Aboriginal rock art site called The Castle. The art was striking and fascinating...

...and the incredible, top-of-the-world view, even more-so.

There's also the spectacular Gunlom Falls which I'm so grateful opened just a few days before we got there (and by "opening," I mean that they finished removing all of the saltwater crocs that had wandered up there in the swollen waters of The Wet), because it was yet another jaw-droppingly beautiful natural swimming pool experience.

(See the iguana hanging out on one of the pool rocks?)

Mary River Wetland

In the early morning on this beautiful billabong ("always water"--a waterway that has water even in the middle of The Dry) of the Mary River...

 

...we got to take a cruise to see more of the flora and fauna of the wetlands. I LOVED the lotus lilypads, which are actually an invasive species from Asia but are still darn lovely in soft sunlight.

But--and this is coming from someone who doesn't really consider herself a keen appreciator of birds--my favorite part of the cruise was all the incredible birds. A few of my favorites:

-- The jacana, otherwise known as "the Jesus bird" because its tiny body and enormous feet makes it appear to walk on water as it picks its way among the lilypads

- The white bellied Australian sea eagle, a relative of the American bald eagle

- The jabiru, a type of stork that is so aggressive it is willing to battle a croc to try to steal food from its mouth

Speaking of crocs, we saw several of those, too. Salties and freshies both live in this section of river.
If memory serves, this one was a saltie.

And, bonus--there was a wild buffalo lurking around the parking area after our cruise. I hadn't even known there ARE buffalo in Australia. They were apparently imported in the late 1800s so that sportsmen could hunt them as game, and they ended up going feral. Seems to be the story of Australia: imported flora and fauna taking over (Europeans included). Our guide warned us to keep a significant distance from this beast, as they are quite dangerous. I didn't need to be told twice; he looks like he's on the lookout for any excuse to charge!

Litchfield National Park

Though it was a bit sad to close the door on our mini-vacation to Bali, it was a whole lot easier to do so knowing we were just returning to our normal vacation in Australia. The view of Darwin at dusk was lovely as we returned to the northern coast of Oz.

 

Before dawn the next morning, we boarded a small bus with 10 fellow travelers for the first of a series of three overland trips that, over the course of two weeks, will take us from Darwin straight down through the center of Australia to Adelaide. I like me some independent travel, but I have to admit, it's kind of fun to just pre-pay a lump sum, sit back, and let someone else worry about where we're going, what we're doing, how we're going to get there, what we're going to eat, and where it's coming from. A pretty relaxing way to travel (other than the repeated pre-dawn wake-ups, so as to make the most of our tour time, which I guess I can't argue with...).

Our first stop was Litchfield National Park, southwest of Darwin, where I learned a LOT about termites and termite mounds. These here are magnetic termite mounds, which are shaped like a pane of glass, with the flat wide sides oriented east/west, and the thin edges pointing north/south/up. This is a very resourceful method for heat regulation within the mounds, as they catch the softer a.m. and late afternoon sun to warm up quickly and then stay warmer longer into the evening, but are relatively protected from the brutally strong mid-day sun.

Then, there are cathedral termite mounds. The waffling surface of these is another way of regulating heat.

And then there are arboreal termite mounds, which are obviously formed around trees. In these, the termites actually hollow out the tree, and that is how the Aboriginal music instrument the didgeridoo is traditionally made--from a tree trunk hollowed out by termites.

More termite trivia:
- The mounds are actually made of termite poop, er, waste.
- That poop, er, waste is so hard and fireproof that a lot of the many WWII-era runways/landing strips in the Northern Territory are made at least in part from ground-up termite mounds.
- Ants and termites are mortal enemies, and ants always win the battle; ants will often conquer a group of termites, kick them out of their mound, and take over the mound as their new ant farm. Harsh!
There's much more, but I have to leave something for you to discover when YOU come visit Australia.

The other highlight of Litchfield was natural swimming holes. We enjoyed three of them, which were all variations on the same basic theme of waterfall, cool swimming bliss:

 

Around Ubud

We decided to spend our last few Bali days based back in Ubud, enjoying more of the vicinity. We walked out to an incredibly beautiful, lush river valley area to the west of town. Man, is this island GREEN!:

 

We also got to see some of the rice terracing northeast of Ubud:

 

One of my favorite stops was Gulang Kawi, an historical site set tucked into another lush river valley, where there are nearly a dozen huge stone carvings representing temples to the gods.

 

We were there early-ish in the morning, and on the day before the Galungan holiday, so the site was mercifully quiet, with most of the vendors not open--though some of their wares were still out for display, like these funny little farmer dudes made of bamboo.

And there was an entertaining (in their loungingness) group of ticket-takers on duty.

On another day, we headed northwest from Ubud into the central mountains area, to the famed rice terraces of Jatiluweh (which are either already an UNESCO World Heritage Area or have an application pending to become one). It was a pretty spectacular sight.

We were encouraged to go for a walk anywhere we liked in and among the rice paddies, but the rice was nearly ready for harvest and so draped over the already-precarious packed-mud paths, and we didn't get too far before our ankles were slashed by rice stalks, our clothes soaked through with the heat/humidity, and our sense of direction telling us it might be better to backtrack the way we came than risk wandering the rice fields, lost, forever.

After Jatiluweh, a stop at a coffee stand, which was actually a pretty sophisticated tourist trap marketing Kopi Luwek: coffee made from beans eaten and shat out by the civet, a cat-like creature of the jungle. The coffee-stop guy showed us a few caged, sleeping (they're nocturnal) civets...

...explained the eating and expelling process (which didn't really need explaining), showed us some not-yet-washed, civet-processed coffee beans...

...and then offered a taste-test of Luwak coffee for about the equivalent of US$4. Why not? It's not like I'll ever actually buy the stuff at some other time, as it's marketed at several hundred US$/kilo of beans. Yikes. And, well, yum.

Then we sat in some serious holiday road congestion. This is a traffic jam, Bali-style:

But the amazing thing is, no one was angry or frustrated or impatient. Everyone just zipped along wherever they could and somehow (upwards of an hour later) it all worked out. Oh, and I have been trying the past two weeks to get a picture of four people on one motor-scooter, which is a more common sight than one would hope, but they're always moving too fast for me to get my camera going. So I was amazed and undeservedly proud of myself when I was trying to take a picture of three people on a motor-scooter, but I hit the button too late and instead, ended up with this unintentional shot of a scooter I hadn't seen coming up from behind us.

A good deal of our time in traffic was in an effort to get to our final stop, a Balinese chocolate factory! Alas, when we finally got there, it was closed for the holiday. I tried to take it in stride, like a Bali native stuck in traffic. Instead of gorging myself on chocolate, I contented myself with this picture of the factory building, which is supposedly one of the largest bamboo structures in the world. (??)

And that's all she wrote on Bali, folks. It's slightly painful to leave here. It's a place apart from any other I've been, and I've had a great two weeks and would gladly return here someday. Luckily, Australia is calling us back, and there are many more adventures still to come in the land of Oz. See you back there!

Toya Bungkah / Batur volcano

Our next Bali stop was the town of Toya Bungkah, nestled at the base of Bali's most active volcano, Batur. This is the view from up on the rim of a more ancient caldera, where the town of Batur moved to when it was repeatedly destroyed by the lava flows that you can see down in the valley.

 

Toya Bungkah is on the other side of Batur, which has (so far at least) been spared from lava flow during eruptions. It sits on a small lake (also called Batur). We made our home for three days at a simple guesthouse with this fantastic view and an equally fantastic name: Under the Volcano III.

Let me tell you, this was a blissful place to be. Maybe due to the higher elevation, it felt markedly cooler and less humid up here than down on the coasts, and the nights were cool enough that I (gasp) could put on long sleeves for the first time in a few weeks. It's kind of shocking how fast days can pass when you just eat breakfast (banana pancakes with honey and local coffee), play some Yahtzee (SR has invented "metaYahtzee," our new obsession), eat some lunch at Volcano I (owned by another branch of the Volcano III family; you wouldn't think that Hershey's syrup in avocado puree would be tasty, but you'd be wrong)...

...wander around the town, where there was a soccer game every single evening...

...and then have some fried rice for dinner before a solid nine hours of sleep. What more could one ask for?

The highlight of the visit, and the impetus for choosing this particular town as a base for a few days, was the pre-dawn, two-hour climb from the village to the top of Batur volcano to watch the sun rise. That's the neighboring island of Lombok (and its own, incredibly massive volcano) that you can see on the horizon, there.

Once light, along with a good hundred other people (mostly Balinese, which surprised me in a good way), we enjoyed the views of the crater rim and, on the other side of the lake, Abung mountain and (the larger shadow behind it) another volcano called Agung.

After our guide cooked us breakfast (a hard-boiled egg and cooked banana between two pieces of white bread--that was a new one for me) over a vent of the volcano, we set off on the very narrow rim of Batur to check out the caldera from a different angle.

We descended on the opposite, less steep side, where you can see the secondary and tertiary calderas of Batur, as well as the lava flows over where Batur village used to be. (The rim at the top of the picture is where I was standing when I took the first shot in this post.)

There's even a colony of macaque monkeys living right up there in the danger zone.

The end of our walk took us down through local gardens...

...and rice paddies...

...back to Toya Bungkah and our days of leisure there. If I ever withdraw my life savings from the bank and seemingly disappear off the face of the planet, this village is probably one of the places you should check for me.