Alices Secret Travellers Inn Alice Springs

Off it was to the dreaded red centre. The place of legends and heat strokes. Stepping off the plane we braced ourselves for the heat chock. We did get a chock, because what we got was a cool breeze. Later on we found out that they've had rains for the last 3 weeks and even had severe floodings. We had picked a little special hostel for Alice Springs, Alice's Secret. It was a small quaint place with almost a camp feeling mixed with a good bit of hippie decor. Some of the rooms were in caravans...

The Northern Territory is everything I imagined the Outback of Australia to be. Hot, hot, hot, red earth, eucalyptus trees, kangaroos, monitor lizards, occasional billabongs, colorful locals, Aborigines. What I hadn't anticipated is that it is full of flies. Haven't done a whole heck of a lot in Alice Springs. It's hard to gather momentum in this heat. Stayed at a hostel called Alice's Secret. The sign says on their gate reads, "Tell others the Secret!". Well, here it is: their hostel sucks.

Joel: Uluru We have just spent 3 breathtaking days in one of the most special places we have ever visited - Australia's "Red Centre". We camped out under the stars every night in sleeping bags around a campfire. The sky was crystal clear and the milky way was so vivid due to the lack of pollution - it was as if there were 10 times as many stars in the sky - beautiful. To give you a sense of the size of Australia, we passed a gas station at a place called "Curtis Springs Ranch" which is the si...

we did it! we finally arrived in alice springs and celebrated it by having our last dinner together in a cheesy backpacker bar. in alice, there are a lot of things to see: a dry river, the flying doctors, the school of the air ... but it doesn´t really feel like an outback town anymore, so if you´re planning to go there, make sure you see a real small outback town as well. the hostel (alice´s secret) was great.

We have had a fab week with Ben, we fished, we walked, we canoed, we gambled! The apartment was great so we were able to come and go as we pleased. Kalbarri is a super Australian seaside getaway. Ben drove well, enjoyed playing eye spy and managed the five hour drive back to Perth without a hitch! His last night was fun, we hit the casino and Trudy came up trumps, winning enough to feed us for a week! Ben taught us how to fish and in turn we taught him how to wax! Saying good bye to Ben was s...

We arrived at Alice Springs at 8 in the morning or something ridiculous, having travelled all night from Singapore. needless to say we were pretty tired and stepping out of the airport into a wall of heat didn't really help much. The taxi driver confirmed it was over 30 degrees already - help, we're going to fry!!! We got settled into our hostel and quickly decided the only course of action was to have a siesta - at 10am. Oh well, better early and then we might get something done during the d...

"To my surprise, my daylight, I saw sunrise, I saw sunlight. I am nothing, in the dark, and the clouds burst, to show daylight. oooo, and the sun shines, yeah on this sunrise. oooo, and I realise who could live without, who could part without, it." Coldplay - Daylight The Red Centre. A whole new world again in this country full of surprises. The Red Centre gets its name from the vast amounts of red soil. And on this red soil we drove, walked and slept for 3 days. Our group consisted of 20 peo...

It was a little bit of a shock getting off the plane into 38 degree heat, but we caught the bus to Alice's Secret - a hostel run by the owners who lived on-site. It even had an outdoor spa! Lots of things to do around Alice - a dawn balloon flight drifting over the outback, watching kangaroos and cows run away from us; a visit to the reptile park, where we could hold a few of the residents (including Cassanova the kissing lizard, and the python which thought Rodney's head was a nice place to ...

Not much happening along the highway as we headed south to Alice Springs until we got to a site called Devils Marbles. Devils Marbles are these really large boulders strewn about in area where there appears to be only flat land. They were kind of fun to climb on, but again the flies were out in force and it was about 110 degrees out so we didn't stick around too long. The second set of groupings we didn't even get out of the car. We joked about how we were turning into Jeff's grandpa who in h...

We spent the afternoon exploring Alice Springs on foot and the night in what seemed like a luxury double room (it had a double bed, sink and even a TV - woo hoo) ready for our early start the next day.