Sweet! No drama!

We came in peace, and leave in pieces... Last couple of hours in Australia before heading home to Sweden via Singapore, and, oh I duno, about 7 hours at Heathrow airport... Crikey! Thought we'd sum up this past month...

Closest to death: Would have been Fraser Island, if it in fact had been a death snake.. however since it was only an eel, it was probably our first sunburn that brought us closest to death.

Yuckiest hostel: Hotel Bakpak in Melbourne... the toilets looked like they were from a nazi death camp, and just in general, it was kinda nasty.

Best hostel: Cavenagh in Darwin... we ended with a huge room, our own bathroom/shower, pool, tv, quite AC, the best internet place weve been to, and in the same building

Poshest hostel: Hostel in Robe, in an old mansion... open fire, 4 meters roof height, extremely clean, and very friendly...

Friendliest hostel: Banana benders in Brisbane

Highlights:

1. Fraser Island 2 day with camping... even though the Camping was a bit terrifying for some (we mention no names), it was probably the coolest trip we did..
2. 3 day Uluru safari... just spectacular
3. Pet and hold Koalas... and you saw them in the wild while travelling the Great Ocean Road.
4. Byron Bay;.. because of its hippie weirdness
5. Woolworths
6. Heli ride over Sydney
7. Surfing with Nicola and Boo (or Paul)...

Best guides:

1. Brendan
2. Nicola
3. Spinner

Weirdest things:

1. Guy picking up bottles and cans with a pair of chinese eating sticks from a garbage can in Sydney... it wasnt very successful
2. Guy, or woman, dressed up as a donkey, doing nothing but move its head for money...
3. That the loud germans told us to shut up...

Haschiest things:
Actually, they are too many to mention them all, but this is a short sample...

• Souvenier koala in the colours of the rainbow
• The painting behind the live music act (Brendan Welch) in Byron Bay
• The place where Sophie bought her shorts (coincidentally also in byron Bay)
• "Do you want rice with your rice noodles?"
• "Whats the difference between a sandwich and a hamburger?"... (actually, not a very obvious answer)
• The giant lobster that we stopped for in some small town, and everyone went out and took a photo of it
• When we asked how to get the photos onto the harddrive at Cannon St Backpackers, and when told how, said that it couldnt be done, because we couldnt see the computer...
• When we took a cab to the train station in Adelaide, only to find that it was closed. We then realised that we didnt know what day it was and had to ask (afraid that we had missed the Ghan), and then we didnt know what date it was, so we had to ask that too, and finally we had to ask what time it was.
• When Joakim called the Melanka Hotel Tour Desk to confirm a trip we were supposed to have done with another company, and wondered why the person on the other side of the line was so obviously retarded... turns out, Joakim was the retarded one..
• Nicola, good luck teaching them Irish to surf... in Ireland...
• To withdraw 500 dollars on of the last days...
• That 10 or so english 30+ people got so completely hammered drinking champagne spritzers together with really fat food that they sang drunken songs on the way back in the bus...

Best buys:

1. Spinning ring...
2. Koala with red christmas hat
3. Tokyo tower (not the actual tower, obviously... the pink wird looking mascot)

Worst buys:

1. Joakims comedy album in Japanese
2. The first pair of flip flops we bought (were thrown away after half a day)

Stupid things we brought with us from Sweden:
Sophies mysbrallor i plysch...

Things we leave behind:
Besides the obvious which, among other things, are the heat, friendly people, and Woolworths, we also leave

• 2 pair of boots
• two towels (one pink and red, and one pink and green... guess what happened?)
• Sophies beautiful Pippi Longstocking towel (thou shalt not have perished in vain)
• a pair of yellow socks (they used to be white)
• a pair of encrusted Snoopy socks
• 4 pair of free Qantas socks... also encrusted
• a sweater that looked more like a piece of cloth than actual clothing.

Things we have learned:

• It gets really warm walking in boots when its 35 degrees outside...
• A pair of sweaty socks can actually become quite hard if you let them dry
• You dont need a gazillion shirts...
• There are a lot of germans here, and the Swedes seem to go to the party places (like Byron bay...) and get annoying when they get drunk (that does not include us)
• We dont like cyclones...
• Apply sun screen to entire body, since body is not flat, it might, in fact is, necessary to apply sun screen to sides of body and back of legs and feet if you are swimming...
• Spiders arent that bad
• Snakes arent that bad, and we have cuddled with a huge python that was sorta cute
• Lizards are cute
• Bats are NOT ok!

Places:

• Tokyo
  Very cool, a good stop over. Not expensive, and lots to see and do in two days time.
  
• Cairns
  Shit hole
  
• Brisbane
  Kinda nice
  
• Byron Bay
  Cool festival vibe
  
• Fraser Island
  A must see
  
• Surfers Paradise
  A big beach, one day is really enough
  
• Sydney
  Nice, and very gay (at least the place where we were staying)
  
• Melbourne
  No opinion, but they have a tram, and we rode it... weeee!
  
• Apollo bay
  One street, one small beach. Kinda nice tho.
  
• Port Fairy
  Suicidal
  
• Robe
  Also suicidal, except the hostel and the chinese restaurant
  
• Adelaide
  Pretty pointless and quiet with a lot of churches... the beach city, Glenelg, was really nice tho.
  
• Alice springs
  Bigger than expected, and not entirely pointless... but very hot and flies everywhere.
  
• Darwin
  Small, not really much to see or do here in the city... the heat is comfy if you dont have to do a lot of stuff in it.
  

Peas on Earth

Most sincerely

/Eddie the Echidna and Donald the Dingo

Pics from Darwin (Litchfield and Kakadu national parks)

Joakim next to a huge pile of termite dodo... its also where they live. They are called Cathedral termites.
Top of waterfall in Litchfield National park

Hewow! This one was the size of the diameter of a grape fruit... b-b-big. Sophie took the photo, and by now she is actually kinda numb to these constant spider sigthings (we saw 10 or so of these in 15 minutes)

Waterfall in Litchfield national park

A jumping croc (from the Orginial Famous Jumping Crocodiles Cruise we took before Litchfield... pretty cool)

Feeeed meeee!

BUUUUUUUURP!!!

Trees, water, leaves, shadows, some sun and straw... at Kakadu national parks Yellow river

Kakadu national park (S. Aligator River)

YAAAWN!!

Flooding in Kakadu.

The Ligthning God whose name we cant remember, we do remember where its at though. Its at Gunwarrdehwarrde (which means Black fellow). Apparrently, these Aboriginal people did not use any drugs, which is hard to believe when you look at this figure...

View over Kakadu national park

Hewow!

Aboriginal rock painting in Kakadu national park (made by the Anbangbang people)

Hewow!

Pics Red Centre

To switch off during take off and landing: Radio, Phone, Walkie Talkie, Beeper and Mogwai (WTF? Can we still feed them after midnight?)

Sophie at landing site

Balloon in the air (not our balloon obviously)

Balloon taking off (not our balloon obviously, so stop with the questions)

Firing up the balloon before our balloon flight over Alice Springs

OMG!!! ITS EDDIE!!

Sorry, I took one cookie.. ok, so it was two, but I was hungry... please dont kill me, I have friends...

Uh uh, dont you go dissing the flag... (funny thing is that none of the other members of our walking group realised that this was actually not my favourite tank top... )

A nice pose at Kings Canyon

Garden of Eden in Kings Canyon

View from Kings Canyon

Base camp near Kings Canyon

We picked up a hitchhiking Koala on our Kings Canyon trip... we said he could tag along if he looked after Sophies shoes, and her encrusted sock... he reluctantly agreed.

We, hrrmm, respected the wishes of whatever their name was and didnt climb the sacred thingy.

Ayers Rock at sunrise

Sunrise during the base walk around Ayers Rock

The Stone

Sophies shoes after walking around the Olgas

The Olgas from a distance
We promise, its not a model landscape or a painting in the background, its quite real. Its the Valley of the Winds, and it was amazing.

Taken at The Olgas

A new member of Good Charlotte (Hair and make - up: Sophie)?

Also a new member of Good Charlotte... hair and make up: The Giant Echidna

The constant view from The Ghan

This is the only pic from Adelaide, and it is us leaving with The Ghan... you do the math...

Get stuffed...

... with candy and eggs :)

15 minutes away from the Kangaroo steak :P

Hello!
We're now back from three days in the bush, exploring Ayers Rock, The Olgas and Kings Canyon. We have approximately walked our asses off.. which means about 2.5 swedish miles. CRIKEY!! It's been really hot and the flies havent been an easy target.. they've been everywhere including a one way trip down Sophie's throat.. very tasty indeed :)

We didnt get the chance to climb up Ayers Rock due to forecast rain/wind... but since we decided to respect the Anangun (or do we respect them when we dont even remember their name... *doh*) People and NOT climb their stone since it to them is sacred, it didnt matter that much to us. We climbed Kings Canyon instead which took about 3 hours. The best, or most impressive thing we saw during these days was The Valley of the Winds at the Olgas.

Pics will hopefully be up in the next few days..

Tomorrow we're having a sleep in and will get up at 4.30 in the morning!!!!!!! HEEELP! We're off to see the sun rise and have breakfast in the outback after a balloon trip...

Darwin NEEEEEEEEEEEXT

can I please get some sleep now??

:)

Main plate... and straw.

/Kangaroo & Steak

:O

Short notice

We will be heading out to Ayers Rock tomorrow morning and will not write anything for three days.

Pics from Melbourne to Adelaide

Joakim swallowed by an Echidna at Mt. Gambier... he was rescued by Percy the Possum tho, but havent regained consciousness yet..

The Petrified forest... it is believed that there once was a forest here, but sand blew in and engulfed the forest and ... whatever, just look it up...

Its a mogwai ... these pics are from Koalas in the wild, although the whole "wilderness" thing didnt seem all too wild. It wasnt a zoo though, but more like a national park where a lot of Koalas, for some reason, were hanging out.

This little, kinda ugly (sorry, but it was), completely petrified Koala was no bigger than a pack of milk, and was hanging on for his life in the wind... you can see what direction the wind is blowing in by looking at his fluffy ears... oh, and he's not in a Eucalyptus tree either, maybe he's too stoned to see the difference...

Could it be lime stone... or Stone... very exciting either way... the first two stops at rocks or bays were exciting, however, after 10 in a row... ahhh... you tend to get a rittre bit ronery, uhmmm I mean, saturated with rocky impressions...

Thiiiiis iiiiiis.... *drum roll* .... The Grotto!

Does it look cold? Because it was...

The 12 apostles, that used to be called the 18 rocks or something when there were 18 of them, and now theres like 5 left, and its still called the 12 apostles.. brrrr

A Bundaberg (rum and coke, with a very distinct rum taste) and a couple of beers (drink that has a yellow colour and tastes sort of bitter) at night at the beach in Apollo Bay... and whats that shit in Joakims hair, or is it in his hair? Kids, drink responsibly...

I once met a tree thiiiiiis big

Feeling happy, are we (15 kilos on the back and 10 on the front)?

Sophie asks of you to tell her how many of these she should buy? Available on Qantas flight... only $25.. good value