Visa Update

Our guest reapplied for her visa through the U.S. Embassy, and requested an appointment because apparently you need to apply in person. The earliest appointment wasn't for another 2 weeks. So she sent an email requesting a rush. This was all on Friday. Yesterday (Tuesday) she received an email saying the request had been approved and her appointment was for today (Wednesday). She was in Darwin at the time, and the embassy is in Sydney. Well, the good folks at Qantas managed to get her to Sydney with a red-eye flight that is supposed to arrive at 6:15am Wed. morning, with her appointment at 10am. They also said it "could" take up to a week to process the application...Her original flight home is on Friday.

At least, the embassy is trying to help. Hopefully they can just issue a temporary visa so she can catch her flight on Friday.

Update***
The embassy has been very helpful to Deni, and hope to have the visa by tomorrow or Friday at the latest.

Stupidheads

On the morning of October 1st, we were broken into. The thief(s) ripped off the the screen to one of the windows, and probably using a broom handle, managed to take a reusable grocery bag. The bag contained the personal items and wallets of our guest from Mexico (Deni) and her friend. The thief(s) must have seen the items on the couch or had been watching the house. Besides the difficulty of the credit cards, Deni's U.S. visa was in the wallet. We actually found the personal items and bag a few houses down, but the wallets are gone. Deni only has a 3 hour layover in Los Angeles on her way to Mexico, and the U.S. Immigration require her to have a visa for this time. This wasn't a problem because her visa was actually a 10 year travel visa. She contacted the U.S. consulate in Australia, and was informed they could not replace it and she needed to completely reapply for a new visa. This is all pretty ridiculous, so she is scrambling trying to get a visa for 3 hours. We've been to LAX, they should be paying her to spend three hours in that airport. Needless to say, there are some people who are helpful and sympathetic, others are bureaucratic and authoritarian. We hope it all works out for her, and are pretty upset with our government.

Fogg Dam The Dry

Last weekend we headed to Fogg Dam again. David drove so that he could take all his camera equipment, and Jenni rode her bike with our friend Nick. Nick happens to be Scottish and this has no bearing on the blog, but we just want you to have all the details. They had to be careful while riding as there was not much of a shoulder. The occasional road train makes it dangerous as well. Not to mention the jerks who don't move over and try and run people off the road because somehow they see people getting physical exercise as a threat.

Here are some photos from Fogg Dam. It's the end of the dry, starting the build-up yet there was still quite a bit of wildlife and water.

Egrets.

Lotus Bird

"I wish I could swim..."

"Exotic Life of Danger and Mystery"

We arrived safely in Darwin after 20 some hours on the plane. The booking for the plane was done through an agency, and whoever set it it up didn't give much time in between flights. For international you need a minimum of 2 hours. It was partially our fault because we didn't catch it when we reviewed the itinerary. It didn't help that our flight from Denver to Los Angeles was delayed. We were left with 20 minutes to catch our flight to Sydney, and miraculously we made it by running. The actual destination of our flight was to Melbourne, so we had to go through customs there, and didn't find out till then if our bags had made it. Luckily they did. Then it was off to Darwin with a four hour flight. After waiting at the taxi stand for an hour, we finally made it home. The cats were very excited to see as evident with the photo.


The next day we went to the Nightcliff market, where David's brother's theory that there is a Peruvian pan flute player in every city received more empirical evidence.


From there we headed to the Darwin Cat show. We're not sure what this guy is doing. There were a lot of beautiful cats there.


Then Jenni took over the camera, where she documented our domestic lives in Darwin. This will probably shatter your visions of us as international spies living an exoctic life of danger and mystery....then again that's probably just David's imagination.

Grocery Shopping at Woolies (Woolworths).

Our Book Exchange.

Newsstand.

Our bakery.

Brand awareness.

And the coup de grace - we finally have a photo of the little man shorts. All attempts have been made to protect this person's identity. As have been stated, they clearly go above mid-thigh. It is possible that this person was a CEO with shorts like that.