Breaking the Language Barrier...

Its no secret my grasp of other languages is laughable, my accent sounds more like fingernails being scraped down a blackboard, do they still have blackboards in classrooms these days?

A friend of mine has made a bet I can't go to Paris and find cool people, not only that I am not allowed to use couchsurfers, or apparently hippies.

So I've taken the challenge as I have faith in myself and my ability to meet random people and end up in random situations. I will always have the parking lot in Toronto where I met Chad & Cam or better yet just recantly in may where I met some strange guys in Monsoons and ended up passed out on a park bench and lets not mention Mexico ok the list could go on.

back to the point Not knowing french in paris could be my downfall of finding awesome Parisans however I have decided all I need to do is learn one phrase in every language perfectly and use it as my opening line. So "What's the time" has worked well for me before & "can you take photos with me so I can pretend I made some friends" then in Mexico where I placed a handful of weed in some guys hand and signalled a joint rolling movement. I am adaptable. But languages are my achilles heel.

and the winning phrase of the hour, destined to break down cultural barriers? Classy enough to entertain the Parisians and get a response from the Turkish. Baffling the Canadians whilst getting a chuckle from the English. Oh yes what is that masterful phrase that translates to every language........

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Why did the plane crash?
because the pilot was a tomato

Life is like a box of chocolates, Don't miss out on the good bits before all that's left is the orange cream that no one likes.

Its been a while since I updated on the crazy world of CS. Its not that its been tame and there is nothing for me to talk about I think its that life has been a little too crazy and I have had a hard time slowing down. I like to remember the good times though and writing helps me with that, plus I hope to inspire others to join me on the CS path and create adventures of your own, or even just to visit me in Darwin and see what an amazing place I live in.

Possibly the last trip of the winter season was Koolpin Gorge last weekend. Apparently I have been here once when I was 10 but I have no recollection. I count it as a new experience and like all new experiences that first glimpse of something incredible makes it all worthwhile. It reminds me of the first time I saw the rocky mountains having been picked up from Calgary and driving through the flat plains, seeing the mountains appear over the horizon to me was one of the most intensely beautiful things I have seen. Growing up in Darwin everything is flat, dry and dusty. Now I was creeping up to this incredible horizon, with snow on the peaks and my breath was taken away. No photos could do this justice. Then after living there for 12 months whilst still being beautiful the magic was not as strong and I was inspired by the people that visited me and that sparkle in their eyes as they saw the beauty of the Rocky Mountains for the first time.

So for me Koolpin was magical, and when I saw the reactions of the surfers beside me as we crawled over the rocks dodging possible death by crocodile and the gorge came into view the whole world seemed to stop and I felt like I was seeing one of the most beautiful things in the world.
Koolpin, is not to be missed, ever.

Koolpin Gorge.

I have a hard time describing its beauty but it is up there and makes me understand why Kakadu is so prized. We also stopped that day at Ubirr my favourite rock art lookout with stunning views of the wetlands & Jim Jim falls now more like a trickle but incredibly gorgeous all the same.

Us jumping for joy at Ubirr Lookout.

Jim JIm. Not flowing but beautiful all the same.


It was a weekend of beautiful things, I realise how much I love Darwin and surroundings. How lucky I am to have such untouched wilderness within a few hours drive.
Ok this post is getting a little sappy.

Koolpin was also the last weekend we would get to spend with Philipp, a charismatic German surfer who secretly wormed his way into our hearts. Whoever his parents are they did an amazing job and I really have nothing to fault on this guy – except he is incredibly slow. Since I am impatient this doesn’t work to well and caused a few arguments by me. Anyway Philipp is a great guy and you would be lucky to meet him. Still I think he is bent on killing himself as I saw him jump from a height of about 30 metres. He mentioned the pressure on his knees was felt but other than that he was ok.

Spot the German Statistic...

We spent most of Saturday swimming and drinking beer.
The we explored a little further up the river and came to some nice waterholes behind the actual swimming gorge, in the lower pools near the campground there had been several big crocodile sightings and it was warned not to swim there.

The whole gang enjoying the beautiful water

View from the top of the falls.

Saturday night was were all the entertainment started, around midnight we headed down to the gorge for a swim. Its about a 20 minute walk and there are no sign posts, you follow the river and have to cross at some point but it goes back and forth and can get confusing. However we had no problems finding the gorge and decided to begin the night by jumping from the waterfall, about 15m high and a half hour walk through the bush and down a cliff to get to it. We started a fire by the water, had a shot of Johnny walker black and then four of us Philipp, Simon, Mick & I began the trek. Being pitch black and no moon, the stars were amazing but the walking was hard. Since we were jumping no one wanted to bring torches. Luckily I had a waterproof headlamp. So as the leader, drunk and falling over constantly it was a pretty eventful trip. We made it, despite one hairy part where we had to slide down a cliff ledge and for us shorter people (mick and I) it was a bit of a stretch but luckily everyone made it and then the four of us stood at the edge of the waterfall looking down at the blackness below us.

“Everyone has a number” Philipp said and assigned me number 2. (hehe) “When you jump and come back up shout your number out so we know everyone is ok” ok we shrugged all four of us jumping at the same time, this could be interesting.

Somehow in the dark no one hit anyone and the rush of falling 15m and not seeing where you were landing was exhilarating, if not for the half hour walk I would do it over and over again. As we all surfaced you could hear the shouts of happiness and ONE! ONE! FOUR! TWO! TWO! THREE!!! OW OW. Then we found out later Mick has leant forward to look and smacked his face on the water. Huge grins on our faces we swam back to the fire and warmed ourselves up, another shot of whisky all round. Philipp pulled out the guitar and we chilled out there in the gorge.

At some point we decide to call it a night and I walk back with Mick, Heidi (from Austria) and Daniel (an Army guy friend of my other friend). Daniel is leading which is good because I have NFI where I am, directions are not my friend. We are crossing some rocks and he drops the glass bottle of Johnny as he stumbles breaking it and slicing a huge chunk in his hand to the bone. He rips off his shirt and wraps it around the wound but the bleeding doesn’t stop and it starts to get frantic as he gets panicky. We are lost. “I know where we go we cut through the bush here and then over the ridge is the car park” He takes a turn from the water and next thing you know we are fighting the bushes, rocks & thorns as we walk blindly through the bush. I am trailing slowly at the back much to his disgust and whispering to mick “this is ridiculous we are walking through the bush of Kakadu at night. People die like this” Sadly I don’t want to be in the bush by myself so continue to follow.

20 minutes pass and the spot he told us we were heading to fails to appear, I finally just shout. “Stop this is retarded” he cuts down to the water, swearing only to discover the water is flowing in the opposite direction of what he though it should be. He is freaking out, the blood is still coming and I start to laugh. “Shut the fuck up Stop fucking laughing” he swears at me frustrated (I had been giggling most of the night). When I swear back “No you shut the fuck up relax, you got us lost, it sucks but being fucking angry about it isn’t going to solve the situation. To me this is hilarious, and tomorrow it will be a story. Everyone is relatively ok and that’s all that matters right now”
He and Mick sit down “We need to camp here tonight”

I look at him, his hand is still bleeding. “No this won’t work his hand needs bandaging properly. Lets back track Im sure I can find where we need to go Come on, follow me” I turn towards the way we came not really wanting to be on my own hoping they follow. They do. After about 2 minutes Daniel cuts down to the water to have a look, “Fuck” I hear.
“What’s up?” I cut down beside him “Oh shit, I know where we are”
“Me to” he mumbles “this is where we were supposed to cross”
And literally minutes from where we were about to camp is the path back to the campsite.

4AM I’m guessing we stumble back into the campsite and bandage Daniels hand up properly.

Still bleeding after an hour. the LIFE THREATNING wound ;)


We all crawl into bed tired, in pain but happy to be back.

I learnt, never expect a bleeding AJ to find your way home, never look down when jumping from high places, and stumbling over rocks at night carrying a glass bottle is a really stupid idea.

When did we become so elite?

There was a recant discussion on our local Darwin couchsurfing group in regards to lazy couch requests, by that I mean people not reading profiles, no pictures or minimal data in, obvious copy/paste requests. It makes me wonder when we became such elitists. If people looked at me now they would assume that I was an expert in couch surfing. My profile is pretty awesome, great pictures, at least a hundred positive references from surfers & hosts. But once upon a time I wasn’t the person I am now.
My first ever CS request was back in January 2009. I had no idea what I was getting into and my intentions were all but pure. My boyfriend and I were driving from Banff, CA to Anchorage, AK to see the Iditarod race. It was March which meant nights were around -10 and way too cold to camp as we didn’t have the right gear. Plus being northern Canada & USA there was a lot of mining this time of the year and the towns that did have any accommodation left had the high rates of over $100CA a night! So my initial reason was because it would save me money. When I sent my request my profile was simple and didn’t even have a picture, of course that changed within a week but my first ever hosts Cynthia & Randy accepted me quite readily without that picture.

Nowadays I will not accept anyone without a picture of their face on the profile, I feel that with growing popularity couch surfing is attracting more and more of the wrong kind of people when I joined it was less than a million now its over 2 million people. At least if there is a photo of them on the internet there is less chance of them ripping me off right?

Going back to my first experience I may have started with the wrong intentions of the website but I left with all the best and have since given back 100x more than I took. So how can I judge a person for such incompleteness when I myself was guilty of it before I really understood the concept of couchsurfing. All it took was a taste and I was hooked. So that couple taking a chance on me made me the surfer/host I am today.

They say you always remember your first

Sometimes its good, sometimes its bad. Sometimes its just a little bit weird but reality is your first time can often make or break you.

I'm talking about couchsurfing, sheesh people!

I've talked about my first time quite often. In fact it featured in my Alaska Road trip part of the blog.

So yea this post is being dedicated to Cynthia & Randy two amazing people up in Northern BC who showed me true hospilaty, genourosity and the real meaning of couchsurfing.



Firstly I can't deny the luxery of a Queen bed and our own room as a plus. I know a lot about couch surfing isn't where you rest your head at night but the people you meet and experiences you get but sometimes when your on the road its just nice to have that comfort. Some of my other places I slept were just as rewarding and all became part of my story. I have definitely slept in uncomfortable spots but I never found it negative as the positives were just to high.

They took me on my first ever cutter rally & sleigh ride. It was freezing cold but amazing to experience a local farmers tradition that not many tourists get to see and something I will treasure forever.



They also lent us their quads and it was fun to explore the streets via ATV. And to warm up we all jumped into the outdoor hottub beer in hand.



We finished the night with baked Salmon & Beer.

Imagine if I had been in a hotel, we would have had dinner, a couple of beers and gone to sleep instead I had one of those once in a lifetime weekends that I will remember forever.

So lucky for me my first time was above my expectations and inspired me to become the couchsurfer I am today, I have fallen in love with the project and the people I meet. Some of my best friends were originally surfers. I try to give first timers the original amazing experience I had, if not better ;)

Happy surfing!

Joyeux Le Quatorze Juillet

Sometimes I wonder what the liberation days are in other countries. I mean Australia Day January 26th is quite a worldwide event considering there are only 20 million australians about 50% of them are more than likely in your country. This means one crazy night of drunken fools in Aussie boxers, and flags tatooed on their faces running amuck in your bars! Ok perhaps I am a little guilty of that myself

What can I say the two Australia days I spent in Canada were more impressive then events in my own town!

If you look back at Australia day as a historical thing you would know its more aptly called "Invasion Day" as it represents the first fleet landing in Sydney Cove. A bad day for the local indigenous population whoose lives were torn apart by western culture. Yet still I have immense pride in my country despite its dark history (I mean really a lot of amazing countries have a dark past!) and am truly proud to be australian.

So today is Bastille Day Frances own National day and it makes me think of a bunch of frenchies who entered my life through couch surfing.

Morgan & Morgane, Jordan, Kevin, Julien, Alice, Eric Pierre & Greg, Eric & Letitia and a few more whoose names elude me. I wish them all the best for their french day and will end this with a video I created of the good times we had.

THE Interhitch CAN COUCHinental Kite CRUISER

I'm gonna go ahead and guess you have never heard of the Beer Can Regatta? its quite unique to Darwin and run by a local charity organisation to raise money for various causes. I have to say one thing Darwin is well known for is their excessive consumption of beer! I had wanted to build a boat this year but ran out of time and energy and went to put it off another year. However a couple of eager surfers Taylor Tobias Martina & More banded together and ended up building a boat in just three weeks under the Couchsurfing name.





It involved a little over 3500 cans all donated from various bars around town and some probably consumed by the surfers themselves and around $400 of duct tape donated by Express Signs who also made the banner. There were two floating pontoons and a makeshift couch which resulted in the finished product THE Interhitch CAN COUCHinental Kite CRUISER!!



Now would it float?

Not only did the boat float





But it came in second, although the boat that came in first cheated!

Getting interviewed by the news for their second place win



and not only that the boat got the prime spot in the Northern Territory Newspaper with the ever enigmatic Kim Su front row..



About 30 couch surfers from around the globe and even a few hosts from Darwin came together to support the team and possible future boat building endevours. Watch this space perhaps next year we will come first!



Special thanks to everyone who made this possible and has definitely inspired me!!

doesn't matter what time it is, something interesting can always happen.

The other night I was woken up at 1:30am in the morning to excessive shouting outside my window. Its a bit of a notorious hot spot with a lot of people walking home from Karama Pub drunk so I often keep an eye out for troublemakers.

Anyway this particular morning the cops had pulled over a white ute and were arguing with the driver who had got out of the car and they were saying "Chris get back in the car" over and over again while he was shouting "I'm not resisting" over and over again and "aren't you supposed to serve and protect" the passanger got out of the car and the cops yelled over "what are you doing" and he had his phone mentioning that he was making a phone call. Next thing Chris gets back in the car but flies across the drivers & passengers seat and out the passengers door and makes a run for it. The cops give chase one of them going back to the cop car to follow him and the passenger gets in the drivers seat and just drives off. 5 minutes later I see the cop car again just trolling the streets so it makes me wonder if the guys got away. I guess I don't really mind being woken up at 1:30am when its THAT entertaining.

So I'm telling the people at work and the accountant who is quite new says to me "Amanda I think your one of those people who attracts adventure" and now that I look at it my life is realatively crazy and crazy shit does happen to me and sometimes I wonder how I surive... its not that I attract adventure I think its that I'm open to everything and rather than sit home I'd rather be out there doing things. And maybe that means adventure who knows but really even the bad stuff I generally find exciting.

Now the Israeli boys were back last night and we went out dancing which was awesome because I love to dance! They are a great couple of guys and we have a lot of fun with them. They love hanging out with us and mentioned several times how we made their Darwin trip which I have to admit Tal was pretty drunk but hey I'm not one to ignore such praise even if its drunken praise!

As for tonight its going to be a little busy in our house. There is two american couples, a scottish guy, an english girl, Ilona my german sidekick, Heather and I and possibly the two israeli boys again and Nathaneal should be back tonight. Really its always a party at my house!