Jakarta to Darwin Australia



Friday, November 16, 2018

J
akarta:
Another day spent at an airport. We had no time to enjoy any of the sites in Jakarta. The city is a fabulous mix of very modern and old architecture. There is a tremendous amount of new building construction, almost like being in New York City. The traffic is quite similar just as if you were on the approach to the Lincoln tunnel at 5 PM on Saturday night.
We had hoped to be done refueling  by noon but  the gods were not kind to us today. We arrived at the airport this morning at 10:30. They were scheduled to refuel us at that time. Around 12:30 two 53  gallon drums of fuel arrived and it took about 20 minutes to hand pump the fuel. The hand pump actually worked not like the five hr. ordeal that we had at Nagpur, India.
We got back to our hotel soaking wet from the heat. After a relaxing shower we are now ready for dinner.
We are off to Darwin, Australia tomorrow AM and it should be about a 10 1/2 hr. flight.
Please don’t forget to support the reason for our trip,Alzheimer’s disease. You can donate directly to the
Alzheimer’s Organization.

Saturday, November 17, 2018

Darwin:
Arrived last night about 8 PM local, it was an 11 hour flight. We flew very close to Bali. From 9,000 feet it did appear to be a romantic island. We did see many other islands that also appeared to be resort islands. When we approached Bali there were eight airliners stacked up waiting to land there. We had great difficulty understanding Air Traffic Control due to their accent. Radar coverage is not great and we had to give position reports every 20 min. which kept us busy.
At about 120 miles out of Darwin we finally heard an Aussie Air Controller and did not have to ask for anything a second or third time.
When we landed we were greeted by two attractive employees from Pearl Aviation and SkyPlan.
They were great!
Australia requires 2 very special bug sprays. One, to be used when you depart Jakarta, the second spray to be used  prior to landing. You must show the cans on landing before you are permitted to open up a door or window.
We were than taken to our hotel, a 20 min. ride. The hotel is in the heart of a tourist area, so food, beer and live music go on till after 2AM.
I did stay up till 1:30 AM and had more than one beer with a bunch of very friendly Australians, they bought me the beers.

Jakarta to Darwin