Day 1 -- The flight to Darwin was fine and as we were picking up our luggage I noticed a girl claiming an Irish drum. I didn’t think too much about it but when we went to get on the shuttle she was there also. We asked her about her travels and she said she was Irish and just on her way around Australia for 5 to 6 months. Her plan was work at a place long enough to make about a months extra living expense and then move on. By the way the round trip shuttle to the hotel was A$7 each. We were staying at the Atrium on the Esplanade. As we approached the hotel we noticed there were tents and stands in one corner of the park right across from the hotel. There was a St. Patrick’s Day Festival going on right in our front yard. And just across the front yard was the ocean. It was a bit damp out and there was another rainbow. The lobby of the hotel was a 7 story atrium with a glass elevator. The center of the atrium was a bar, lounge and restaurant area. A great place to sit in AC and enjoy the indoor greenery and water-way flowing under two attractive bridges. The indoor creek was stocked with colorful carp. There was another restaurant also.
Our room had a remote AC control and three different kinds of pillows to choose from -- soft, hard, and down. After we dropped our bags, it was time to go out and eat, so we went across the street to the Festival and drank Guinness and ate some kind of crepe. There was music around but it was contemporary so we walked around until sunset and watched a beautiful one over the ocean. There seemed to be a time problem when we got to Darwin. A half hour time change took place and no one told us until we figured it out when we set up the wake up call for the morning.
It seems like all hotels have 110 VAC for shavers and an adapter if you need one to accommodate the 220 VAC which is normal AUS. All hotels had in room hair dryers, irons and ironing boards. I noticed another nice hotel close by also on the Esplanade. It was the Holiday Inn Plaza and appeared to have balconies for all rooms which faced the ocean. Might be nice to try it some day.
Day 2 -- The tour to Litchfield National Park was on the agenda. Apparently it starts from and returns to Darwin daily . Note that all tours were buses from Great Sights. They were very accommodating in pick up, bag handling, stopping to take pictures and more. They are highly recommended.
We were picked up from the hotel at 7:30am and our first stop was for morning tea at a small tourist attraction where the owner had a butterfly compound and fruit orchard. We saw some butterflies and ate fresh paw paws, which are like papaya. They were very good. Further down the road we stopped to see some termite mounds. There are two major types the Cathedral type and the Magnetic type housing different kinds of termites. The mounds get to be 8 feet tall.
Next stop was Tolmer Falls where we viewed the falls, but could not swim because the water was too high. Further on was the Wangi Falls where there were caves around the falls. Along the path way were large trees which housed Fox Bats which are about one foot long when hanging upside down from the trees. There were about 50 in some of the trees. They are fruit eating bats not people eating so we were safe. Some of the unique plants are the Pandanus reeds that look like small diameter bamboo and the paper tree whose bark can be stripped and used instead of paper. Which came first, the paper tree or papyrus?
The final stop was at Florence Falls, which was a long walk down 165 stairs to a beautiful pool below the falls that we used for swimming. Access to the pool was from a small beach of rocks on the edge of the stream which led away from the pool fed by the falls. It was very refreshing since it was quite warm out about 106 F. But alas we had to walk back up the daunting 165 stairs to get back to the parking-picnic area. There was some incentive though, we were to have lunch, it was a box lunch but lunch none the less. The food was good and we had the luxury of watching the misshapen Kookaburra bird. Just look at the (correct) spelling of the name and you can imagine that the bird must be weird, it is. The head is about 2/3 rd’s the size of its body, not counting the tail feathers. It has nice blue coloring with a beak that is fairly broad and about as long as the head. It was in prominence in the picnic grounds scrounging food. It was not aggressive though.
We were back at the hotel in time to eat at the Hanuman restaurant on Mitchel Street. It was a short walk and well worth it. The food was a bit spicy but I like it that way. They had a good menu and service was good.
The Litchfield tour was a good exposure to unique Australian landscape including waterfalls, swims in natural pools at the base of waterfalls, and termite mounds.