A town like Alice
Trip Start
Oct 05, 2007
1
41
97
Trip End
Oct 04, 2008
Alice Springs,
Australia
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Checking out at 5.30, onto a bus by 6, never a good start to the day, unsuprisingly our bus of 22 was rather quiet as we embarked on the first length of our journey! After a quick stop at a camel farm and a dose of blood sugar things were looking up as we once again headed out through the outback! Now at this point i would just like to say that there is NOT nothing in the outback as I had previously been led to believe! There are actually a lot of trees, shrubs, cattle farms and a few ponies and birds!! By lunch time we had arrived at Kings Canyon, donned our rediculous hats and even more rediculous (although invaluable) fly masks and ladened with many bottles of water, strode off on our 5.somthing K walk in 43oC heat!! We were very glad to reach the garden of eden - a good place for a very cold swim! We were able to swim across the lakey, pondy thing and climb onto a ledge which looked across Kings Canyon, which had been erroded away by the wind! It was an incredible sight! After drying off we struggled the rest of the way up the canyon and had a good look at it from the top! We were very glad to reach the realative comfort of the mini bus with its air con, as we set off further into the out back - with a quick stop at Fool-uluru (certainly fooled me) and what remains of Australias inland sea - which used to be rather large!! Finally we reached our campsite (we had driven the length of England - only looks like a blip when you look at a map of Aus though) and preparations were made for supper!! Wierdly it was decided that we needed an enourmous campfire, so we enjoyed some good vegetably pasta whilst roasting around it! We slept in swags under the stars - which are far more comfortable that most of the 'matresses' we slept on in Asia!!
The following morning we were awoken at 4.00 by our guide playing a didjereedoo on his ipod! This was so we could reach Uluru for sunrise (which was dissapointly off center - although as the largest single piece of rock in the world it was still a pretty awesome thing to see emerging out of the dark! After a good hearty breakfast we set of for Kata Tjuta (the olgres) which are conglomerates (we got lots of fascinating geology lessons on our walks around the sights which i loved as i allways want to know how these large lumps of rock get here in the first place! Especially everything around it is completely flat)! Anyway conglomerates are made of lots of different rocks squished together! We did the Valley of the Winds walk here which was suprisingly windy!! They are incredible formations though, again carved by the wind that gets up its speed because there is nothing else in the way! Kata Tjuta is an aboriginal man sacred sight, they believe that the wind is the spirits of their ancestors. We then headed back to Uluru where we had a huge bits and bobs luch (hooray) topped with flies for extra protien - yum!! We then had a look around the cultural center which was as uninformative as everywhere allways is, although they did actually have a reason - being that they wern't allowed to pass a lot of information onto the wrong people! We then did a short walk to a few of the sacred sites at the base of Uluru with our guide explaining what they were for. Uluru isn't one sacred site it is actually a series of 12 sacred men and woman sites around its base, for example there is one where woman would give birth, we also saw some rock paintings which are painted as if you are viewing everything from above and were used to signify where resources such as water was. We were very glad to get back into the bus and away from the frigging flies which are worst at Uluru because thats where all the bloody tourists are (glad I never was one)! Anyway we headed off to our final campsite which had not only a pool but......SHOWERS (the outback turns you orange)!! Refreshed we headed back to Uluru for the sunset, it was pretty special eating supper whilst the sun went down behind us and we watched Uluru (apparantly) grow reader (i think it just got darker)! Another night in swags, during which i learnt not to sleep with your face in the wind - you will get a mouth full of sand!
Our final morning was freezing and WET - only Olivia and Kathryn could go to the middle of Australia and get rained on!! We had another sunrise breckfast - this time huddled up in the mini bus and then marched at high speeds (still very cold) around the base of Uluru which really made you realise how ginormous it is (and we can only see 1/6-1/8th of it!! We took in the many other sacred sights there were and then returned to the mini bus to drive the length of England again back to Alice! We were exhausted!!
Since we've been back in Alice its seemed really very cool here allthough i am assured that it is infact 34oC today!! We had a very enjoyable day for Kathryn's birthday ( i made sure there was very chocolaty cake)! Yesterday we went to the reptile center and held an olive python (i want one) and three very strange species of Lizard one of which looked like a pine cone! And today we leave (on an airoplane - thank buddah - the bus takes 3 days) for Cairns.......where it is raining!!
