Days 22-25

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We reached our final destination on the west coast! It has been a long slog but we had loads of fun and Darwin is a pretty cool town. It is SUPER hot there though, it was easily reaching 35 everyday. We just sorted out a campsite and cooked some food and stuff on the first day but on the second day we chilled by the pool and then headed out for the night to celebrate driving 6000km! Darwin is a nice city, very easy to navigate and reasonably small but it has everything you could need. One of the streets was just bar after bar after bar so we spent the evening there doing a bit of a pub crawl, and ending in some very bad karaoke! I was totally mauled by sandflys unfortunately - it was the one night I forgot to put repellent on. We went to the pharmacy to get something for it (the itchiness was unbearable) and the pharmacist said it was the worse she had ever seen - I have about 70 bites on each leg, I’ll load pictures when I can! So the next day we just lazed by the pool and chilled at the campsite. The heat really is something else, it is difficult to muster the energy to do anything; I don’t know how people manage to work in this heat! On Thursday we went to the local market which was really cool. It is full of stalls with the usual tourist stuff but also local clothes and jewellery designers and there are also loads of food stalls, catering for every possible type of palate. The market is right next to the beach so we bought some food and then sat on the beach and watched the sunset. It really was beautiful. Friday was a very sad day as we had to give back Sandman 😞 we had to pack all our stuff up and clean the whole van out and it was SOOOOOOO hot, but we managed to get it looking respectable and so we handed the keys back and checked into “The Cav”. In comparison to the last hostel “The Cav” is pretty cool with is own pool and bar and they serve cheap food (they do the most awesome pizza!). We were at the bar and this guy Martin started talking to us; he was originally from Dublin but moved to Australia about 40 years ago and he set up his own fish shop trading both fresh and frozen fish. Apparently he is the largest fish supplier in the Northern territory. So anyways we are chatting to him and he was kind of weird but harmless, just kind of rabbiting on about something and nothing - I think he was a bit lonely. So he buys us a drink and we offer to buy him the next one but he won’t accept saying he has to go back to the shop. Next thing we know he is saying “o come with me to see the shop, i’ll drive you there and drive you back” so, of course, we were saying “no no no, we have stuff to do...blah blah” but he won’t take no for an answer and me and Andy are looking at each other like “omg what do we do now?” because there really was no way to get out of it. So it is our last day on the west coast and we end up in a fish shop! It was a cool store but Martin insisted on going through every freezer and all along the counter showing us where everything was! “here is the frozen prawns....here’s the barramundi...here’s the crab....” it was SO surreal. Luckily one of his staff finished her shift about 20mins after we arrived so he offered to take her home and drove us back to the hostel but we were just like “what the hell just happened there?!” Our flight is at 5 o clock in the morning so for we are just going to take it easy tonight and get some sleep - the airport shuttle is due to pick us up at 3am - I hope we wake up in time!

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