Hello everyone! I'm posting this from Alice Springs, a small town of about 35,000 in the heart of Australia. Im currently at the airport about to continue my adventures. To give you an idea of what kind of place this is, the airplanes are parked in the dirt here. I've been in the area for the past few days and It's been a solid 40°C everyday here. So right now all I want is to roll in some snow.
The town itself isn't very exciting. It's got a few restaurants, hotels, and souvenir shops as well as a lot of aboriginals just hanging around. The exciting stuff is a ways away (see map below). So on Friday morning at 5:45am I hopped on a tour bus to go do some exploring. I was really nervous about traveling all by myself but so far it's been fantastic. My first night in Alice Springs I ran into another UTS exchange student also staying all get my hostel so we explored the town together. And my tour group had a nice mix of young backpackers, young professionals and adventurous oldies. There was a young couple who had quit their jobs and were traveling the world for 8 months, an older couple from San Fran, a couple from Montréal (it's a small world), a five time world champion freestyle whitewater kayaker with her mum, an Irish doctor with a Sydney friend and some kiwis. Basically I met some incredible people who have inspired me to never stop travleing. If there is a will, there is a way.
So back to the sightseeing. On day one we went to Uluru which is a giant rock sticking out of the ground. This and everthing else I saw are located on aboriginal land so it has a lot of importance to them. We went to a culture center to start where we learned a bit about the traditions of the aboriginal people. Their laws aren't written and are very secretive so there was very little we were allowed to know. Although I love to know things I'm not supposed to know I was really happy that the government has allowed their traditions to exist and not paid a lot of money go get them to tell tourists everything. While walking around Uluru we saw some art in teaching caves and also learned some stories that the aboriginals use to explain the different parts of Uluru. Uluru stands some 300 meters above the ground and there is a path to the top. Forty five people have died on that hike since it opened in the sixties and the aboriginals don't appreciate people climbing It so I gladly opted out of that adventure and did some shorter walks around the base. I got to see the world's third most toxic snake!
That night we drove away from Uluru so we could watch from afar as the sun set and turned uluru a beautiful red-orange-purple. After that we drove to camp and set up our swags which are just sleeping mats inside a canvas sleeping bag. We slept under the beautiful night sky for a couple of hours before getting up at 4:30 so we could watch the sunrise and head out for a hike before it got too hot (too hot being about 100).
On Day 2 we visited Kata Tjuta aka the Olgas which are 36 very large rocks grouped together. We did hike through the valley of the winds in the morning. It's known as the Valley of the Winds because as the wind blows across the very flat desert and all of a sudden hits large rocks it's forced through the small spaces between the rocks which makes it extra blustery on the other side.
After bringing our bodies back to their normal temperature during a lunchtime swim we hopped on the bus and started the trip to Kings Canyon. Over 3 days we drove a total of 1300 kilometers. I have no idea if that's a lot but I would like to thank my parents for driving me to iowa every other year and forcing me to learn the skill of enjoying the very boring, flat scenery. That skill was used a lot.
We arrived at the Kings Canyon station with some very menacing looking clouds in the sky. As we enjoyed our barbecued kangaroo and really nice lightening show began. So we decided to trek out to this high viewpoint to really get enjoy the beauty of lightening striking all around us (don't worry it was a good 50k away in any direction). You know when your guide, who does this trip 52 times a year, is excited that you're about to see something good. I think we watched lightening light up the sky for a solid hour before the torrential downpour started and we headed back to camp. The rain was coming down so hard it was painful. Thankfully we had tents to sleep in that night.
We rose again at 4:30 the next morning for our drive to Kings Canyon. The hike started with a 20 minute straight uphill section but after that it was rolling hills around the rim. Since it had rained so hard the night before we got to see the rare waterfall in the canyon. It was beautiful. Since there is a source of water at the bottom of the canyon there are many different animal and plant species residing there in what is known as the Garden of Eden. I could have sat next to the waterfall all day because It was so peaceful.
After Kings Canyon it was time for the 5 hour drive back to Alice Springs. We stopped at a camel farm on the way home. Apparently after camels were no longer necessary in the outback some were released into the wild to die. Now there are over one million feral camels roaming the deserts of central Australia. We also tried camel burgers on the trip and I have to say they're pretty tasty.
Since I'm writing this post from my phone I can only put pictures at the bottom of this post. So enjoy the photo dump below! All the pictures are from different places we visited and Alice Springs.
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