We arrived into Alice Springs to the hottest weather we've experienced yet- 38 degrees and forecast to be hotter during our tour! We thought we had better try and get acclimatised quickly so had a wander around the 'city'. Alice Springs was the smallest place we had seen in a long time and we managed to wander around the main bits in an afternoon! We had fun making new friends at the reptile centre:
The next morning we were up bright and early to meet our tour group to see Uluru (Ayer's Rock), Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) and King's Canyon. The journey to Uluru took about 6 hours so we were very relieved to finally arrive at the campsite! After a quick lunch we headed to the rock. We've seen a fair few rocks during our travels but it really was stunning. The sheer size of it and the depth and breadth of colours mesmerised us as we took a guided walk around it's base. Our your guide was really good and gave us lots of information about the significance of different parts of the rock to the Aboriginal community, what the cave paintings meant and the different flora and fauna around.
We watched the sunset over outback and then headed back to camp for some bush tucker (BBQ!).
This was when we found out the extent of our accommodation overnight - we knew we would be sleeping in swag rolls (big sleeping bags) but had assumed we would be in tents. How wrong we were! Turned out we would be sleeping under the stars for the next 2 nights (or rather would have been if it wasn't so cloudy!). Our guide instructed us on how to avoid letting snakes into our swags and preventing the dingos from eating our trainers and then bid us good night! Needless to say most of us found it difficult to sleep that night (except Andy who was asleep as soon as his head hit his makeshift pillow!)! The other thing that didn't help our sleep was the sandstorm that kicked up followed by a thunderstorm and heavy rain! We pulled a kind of hood over our heads to protect us from the sand and I managed to fall asleep again finally. Unfortunately due to the heat I hadn't zipped up my swag so woke up rather wet once I realised it was raining! I found out later that it had been raining for about 45 minutes before I even realised! Needless to say we were all actually quite glad that our wake up call was at 4am to watch the sun rise over Uluru!
The sunrise again was pretty cool to see but I don't think we got the full impact of it as it was still cloudy and raining. Our guide assured us that our photos would at least be different to everyone else's as it didn't normally rain there!
The clouds finally started to clear as we began our hike through Kata Tjuta, some equally impressive rock formations near Uluru.
It was a beautiful hike with fantastic views, but after about 3 hours of hiking in clear blue skies we were all baked and exhausted. This combined with about 2 hours of sleep the night before led to the majority of sleeping some of the 4 hour journey to King's Canyon. I probably would have slept more on the journey if our guide (who was driving us after probably only a couple of hours sleep as well) hadn't mentioned that we were going along the most dangerous road in Australia (due to wild horses and camels just appearing on the road) and the fact that there was a tremendous thunderstorm whilst we were driving! Our guide took pity on us for the 2nd night and wangled us some tents for the night as it looked likely to rain again. We had never been so happy to be able to sleep spider/snake/dingo/rain-free!
For our last day we hiked 6.5km through King's Canyon. Again this walk was stunning with amazing views and lots of interesting fauna and flora. Our guide taught us about the specific plants used to make spears and boomerangs as well as those used as antiseptic 'bush band aids' and sun screen.
Once we arrived back in Alice Springs we were extremely grateful for proper showers and beds (even if they were dorms!) and decided to reward ourselves with a few beers.
Although the rain and grey definitely helped it to feel a bit more like home, this was a run up to Christmas like no other and we'll have some fantastic memories of it.
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