When I say “Glamping” I am referring to glamorous
camping.
In April, Tommy and I took advantage of two holidays falling
on back-to-back weekends, Easter & ANZAC Day, and decided to take the three
days in between off from work to escape to the top end of Australia, the
Northern Territory. Easter also
happened to fall on my birthday this year, so it was pretty much the perfect
way to celebrate the big 25! The
top end was really our last major destination to visit in Australia, and now we
can happily check it off! In two
and a half years, we really have seen the majority of this beautiful country
being the travel adventure-ers we are.
Now back to glamping.
I say glamping because as opposed to a previous camping trip where we
camped in swags (super sleeping bags) under the stars, on this trip we actually
had permanent tents at every campsite, some even with swimming pools! Yes there were still snakes, frogs and
bugs that would magically appear in the toilets, but we had hot water and
showers every night. To us, this
was a luxurious camping vacation!
Up the top end there are three incredible national parks,
Kakadu, Katherine & Litchfield.
We booked an Adventure Tour to trek through all three national parks
over the course of 5 days.
The trip began in Darwin, a city that I am not sure really
should be classified as a city seeing as it is made up of about 8 blocks. We managed to see every part of the
area in our first afternoon. The
heat and humidity was stifling.
This was a precursor of what was to come. Showers followed by sweat…
We hit the road early Monday morning for 5 days out bush way
in our big camper truck 4 wheel drive, 14 of us passed out in the back, and our
tour guide charging down the highway towards Kakadu National Park.
Over the next 5 days we hopped from
park to park, and along the way we went hiking, swam in water holes (croc
free!), jumped off water falls, toasted marshmallows over the bon-fire, made
new friends, ate LOTS of ice cream, all while exploring three beautiful national
parks up in the Northern Territory.
To paint you a picture, the top end of Australia is extremely hot and humid
and there is nothing but bush and red dirt surrounding you. This caused for a lot of dirty smelly
campers…
It was an incredible trip that we did not want to end, but we
were also excited to take a shower and actually feel clean, sleep in a big
comfy bed, and wake up AFTER the sun had started to rise!
I will let the pictures tell the rest…
CROC in the wild (left) | Goanna lizard hanging with us in the water hole (right)
Welcome to Kakadu!
Indigenous rock art
Swimming in a croc free water hole
Katherine's Gorge
Litchfield National Park
