My Trip to Darwin. I am lucky i escaped without getting eaten by a bloody croc!

Do you know how many crocodiles there are in Darwin? If you pour a glass of water out of your kitchen sink there will probly be one in your glass that will bite your head of when your trying to quench your thirst! ok maybe a slight exaggeration but there's heaps of em. Its such a weird little city. I love it. So quirky! Its this tropical paridise with lush green tropical foliage all over the place but then there is red dirt everywhere. its this mix of desert and coastal beauty. very unique. very cool.

So i went to darwin to visit my best freind katie and i can't remember ever squeezing so much fun into 4 days. its was amazing! The first thing we did was get in this little boat a bit up river from where katie lived and check out the wild crocs. we were out only for 2 minutes when i saw my first one. then within about 3 minutes the boat was surrounded by 4 and 5 meter crocs fighting over who got to eat the bit of bloody carcas on the end of the rope our guide was dangling over the edge. coooooooooooooooooooool!! they looked like dinosaurs. it was so weird to be so close to them. the boat didn't have much side railing and was really low so we were only about a meter from the crocs faces and when they lunged out of the water to get the meat they came within inches of our faces and there was nothing between us!! truly scary and extremely fun! you don't dangle any part of you over the side rail at any time....yeah. we found out there were about 3000 of them in a ten k stretch of water that eventually spills out into darwin beach and darwin harbour. now this would be one of the reasons that no one swims in the ocean in darwin no matter how hot it is. the other reason is the box jellyfish that frequent the waters. they have swimming pools instead in darwin...although they did find a croc in the local pool not long ago too, oh and there was one hanging outside a local pub that they had to harpoon and drag outa there before he ate a dunkard. i think its best to just sweat it out when in darwin aye? i was scared to even take a bath!

There were to many amazing fun things to go into great detail but we saw many more crocs and some other great creatures. we poured water on a wild piggy and we saw a tiny monkey who did some weird and dirty things, we went on some wild rides at the darwin show (we screamed our heads off and got bruises!), we had wonderful seaside picnics with wine and prawns, we cruised the outdoor markets and went to moonlight cinema. we fed giant fish some chillies and lemon, we went out and partied and saw a great drag show, we bbq'ed, we talked, we had the time of our lives.

I learnt something valuable in darwin. the only way to survive a croc attack is avoidance. you avoid, you survive. you get attacked you die. no second chances. remember that boys and girls!
he he he. darn crocs.

From Heliboarding to Getting lost in the New Zealand Bush! There is always an adventure to be had! ha ha

A little update on the events of the past few months....Well the business is going pretty well besides a few hiccups. We have got what we came home for - We have sold our business and now we have a great little nest egg to play with but we still have a lot more work to do and alot more money to make so we are working hard (Matty especially!). We are still living at coogee but i think we will be moving to manly very very soon. Ahhhh maybe we will finally settle into Sydney life since we have been back for over 3 months now - almost 4 actually.

We have endured the winter and now summer is not to far away. I can't wait to get some sun on my skin and enjoy what sydney is all about... summer, beach, nature, wine picnics, outdoorsyness, bbqs....oh not long now.

We have managed to squeeze some adventures in our work filled wintery life though. A few weeks ago matty was in the US on a business trip and he called me 2 few days before he was supposed to arrive home, "honey, book yourself a flight to christchurch, it's dumping snow over there. Lets go heliboarding!"I was on a flight the next day and met matty at the airport Saturday morning and we hired a car and drove straight to methvin through breath taking scenery and sheep filled paddocks and up a long windy dirt road until we finally arrived at a small house and a helipad surrounded by mammoth snow filled mountains. My heart was pounding with nervous excitement. I was so excited at the thought that i would soon be riding freshies beyong my wildest dreams but also worried that i wouldn't be a good enough rider to keep up with the group. It all happened so fast from there. They stuck at avalanche trancever on me after i quickly got changed in a shed toilet and the next thing i knew i was in a heli! It was a visual mind explosion being in that heli over the mountains. I was speechless. Words cannot discribe the awe and wonder i felt at that moment as we flew over those mountains. The nervousness gave way to pure excitement and i couldn't help but let out a few squeels.
After the first run i knew i was most certainly a good enough rider for heli boarding and riding Once we got on the mountains those freshies were just absolute ecstacy. Iwas the most stoked person heliboarding that day for sure. I was just laughing and smiling and squeeling ALL day and by the end of the day i was so high i thought i had ascended to nirvana! We had a cool little snow picnic for lunch and it was all just perfectly perfect beyond words.

The next day i was soooooooooooooooooooooo sore i couldn't move without moaning but it was worth it. Iwas too sore to ride another day so after a looooong hot tub we decided to go on a bush walk. ha! we had no idea what we were in for!!

We were told there was a gorgeous scenic walk around this place called rakaia gorge. It was normally a 2 hour walk but we found out when we were half way that no one had walked it for a long time because it had been snowed over. Now it was all melted but there were tree branches (well more like entire tree's) all over the path and also parts where the path had pretty much just caved in down a steep cliff. It was a very pretty walk but challenging with all the obsticles and instead of 2 hours it took about 3 and a half and we had run out of water and we were hungry by the time we got to the end, and the only way back was the way we came. It was about 3pm so we were very disheartened by the fact that we would be thirsty, starving, cold and in the dark on that scary crazy path in the very near future. We sat on the river banks nibbling on a tiny squashed untasty sandwich portion i had with me when we heard a noise...is that?......a boat!.....it is!. they were doing jetboat rides along the river in the gorge!! we stood up and waved frantically as they went past but they just zoomed by and waved to us i a freindly way. doh!! hmmph back to the sanwich but then 10 minutes later they were coming back and this time we waved like we REALLY meant it. They pulled over and gave us a wild and super fast ride back to where we started and ended the boat ride with a huge 360 burnout. We were rescued! yay! What took us 3 1/2 hours to walk took 7 minutes too get back by boat and instead of being on that scary dark crazy path we ended up at a gorgeous restaurant drinking rasberry beers and eating delicious food for the next few hours. woohooo!!

That was our 2 day adventure in new zealand.