Friday, June 4, 2010


Today was an all day travel day, although it took us less than 7 hours to drive to Coral Bay, instead of the 8+ the map listed. Not far from Coral Bay we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn, so we’re officially in the tropics now. Besides almost running down a couple of kangaroos, the drive was pretty uneventful. These two appeared to be playing chicken, because they stood on the side of the road, watching our car approach, and then at the last second they both hopped right out in front. We had been warned by multiple people not to drive at night, but sometimes the roos are active during the middle of the day as well. We were amazed at the number of road kill on the drive to Coral Bay, everything from kangaroos to goats, sheep and even cattle. There are very few fences, so the cattle and sheep just wander wherever they want to go, and the goats are apparently wild. We’ve heard that driving even further north, we can expect to encounter lots of emus and even wild camels, and I can't imagine what hitting a camel would do to your car.

The scenery consists of mile after mile of these termite mounds, and not much else; and the termites apparently eat leaves and sticks from bushes, since there are no trees or other sources of wood around, like houses.