CAIRNS, GOVE, DARWIN / AUSTRALIA
We feel like annihilating Qantas. Who said they were a brilliant airline? Who let them into the One World alliance? Why doesn't Brandson get out here and give them some competition? winge winge winge. The bitterness of having spent a full day trying to do a reroute on our Global Explorer world ticket and getting screwed big time is still present.
Anyhow, after much stress, we finally caught the flight from Cairns to Darwin, looking forwards to a celebratory G&T - but no, not on Qantas (now is that not a totally valid reason to hate them, surcharge or no surcharge???). We then landed in Gove. Where the hell is Gove?! We found another wolf's bum as Senor Yardini calls it. This place is not even connected by a normal road; the closest town is about 400km by 4x4: lovely. For some reason, they decided to disembark all passengers. Transits were told to wait in the lounge. Well there was no lounge. We walked from the plane to the carpark, directly... We eventually had to make our way back on board via metal detectors and x-ray scanners. Cristian, who that very morning had announced that he was shaving only his neck, or underchin, or whatever men call it, got stopped by a security lady, not for beeping though. The lady told him that he had to undergo and explosives test. yes, an explosives test, in Gove, after having walked in via the carpark slash lounge. So she took out this suction device and started to remove dust particles from his shoulders, knees, feet and bag (at which point i asked if i could have a go too), she then put the device in another device and eventually told us that Senor Y had not been handling explosives or gun powder recently. always good to know.
So we embarked and made our way to Darwin, which, along with Gove, has a time difference of 30 minutes with Cairns. We thought it was a joke, but no, we are now 30 mins behind ourselves.
Tomorrow we are driving to Kakadu National Park. More, after that, from Kuta, Bali.