Major panic! The alarm went off silently so we were woken at 07:30 by the telephone ringing! So slightly bleary eyed we headed off to the local market with our cooking instructor and another "student". The market was amazing, walking around with someone who knows what they're talking about always helps, especially with everything so foreign. After the tour we headed to the cook school, or rather the really impressive kitchen of a guest house! We were treated to Hibiscus Tea and a selection of sweet rice deserts, which are served as snack items or for celebrations. It's amazing what you can do with rice, palm sugar and coconut! The cooking class itself introduced us to ten traditional Balinese dishes. Thankfully the kitchen staff had carried out the more time consuming task of chopping and slicing ... read more

What another brilliant day in Bali! After a long lie in we started the day with Charlie going for a run and myself catching up on the news! Our morning was spent in "Waterbom" a water park with some awesome rides. Our first ride and probably the best was on the "Boomerang" basically a huge half-pipe, where you ride on an inflatable down a tube then up the half-pipe around fifty feet, only to then descend backwards and over a ramp before hitting the water! We spent around two hours going up and down the eight different chutes and drops! Charlie may have overcome a part of her fear of heights when she did the "Smashdown" a near vertical water chute! We spent the late afternoon being driven to Pura Luhur Ulu Watu, a cliff top ... read more

Charlie fitted in a forty minute run along the beach boardwalk. After another good breakfast we again spent the morning by the pool before organising tomorrows day out. We then took off into the streets looking for lunch, finally settling at a Tapanaki counter, it's always great watching a chef at work! Our main task today was to find the Bali Bombing Memorial. This in itself took a few hours as we wondered off the more traditional tourist haunts and through the smaller back streets with the more persistent stall owners. The Memorial is a very simple design with 22 flag polls representing the countries that experienced losses. Though simple the design is very effective and it's sombring to realise that the majority of the victims were backpackers! Our evening meal was at Batan Waru, an ... read more

Our last day in Australia. Charlie went for an early morning forty minute run to the botanical gardens and then we hit the pool to cool down. We've been really lucky in Darwin (even taking the humidity into account). Seeing it in the wet season is a real joy, everything is so lush and vibrant! The wet season has also helped as the majority of visitors come in the dry season, which has meant that Darwin is more relaxed and chilled out! It would be interesting to see the place in the dry season to compare not only the environment but the atmosphere! Once checked out we strolled around (a shut) Darwin center and catching up with news from home. Congratulations Helen & Rich who recently got engaged in New York! Our flight to Bali was ... read more

Another fairly early start today (7:20) for a trip to Litchfield Park. The trip started with the feeding of Barricuda and spotting Short and Long Neck turtles at Howard Springs. We then went to see Cathedral termite mounds. These grow on average about 1 meter a decade so we were surprised to see one around five meters tall! Next to these were Magnetic termite mounds, these look like tombstones and are always orientated North / South to allow the flat faces to pick up the heat from the rising and setting sun! The coolest part of the trip was yet to come as we swam in two Waterfall pools (the Florence and Wangi Falls). What we didn't realise until after was that these are still inhabited by Fresh Water Crocodiles (though evidently they're more scared of ... read more