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So in my defense I have constantly commented about how bad I am at keeping up with this! But in this case, I broke my computer (AGAIN!) right after getting back from the trip so there was no way to write it.
On May 9-11, Meghan Shannon and I all took a trip to Alice Springs, from which we would go on a trip to see Ayers Rock aka Uluru. Once again we had to leave super early and there was a big function on the night before! We have the abosulte worse timing. Like a normal person, I decided to just head in early and get sleep, but Shannon didn't end up going to bed til about 3 and Meghan didn't go to bed at all. But at 7 we took a taxi on down to the bus stop and wrote our way into Melbourne.
Alice Springs is about a 3 hour plane ride so we didn't end up arriving til about 2-3ish and it has a 1/2 hour time difference from where I live. How weird right? Who knew they did time differences in half hour intervals. Once we arrived, the airport was tiny so we found
the bus we were supposed to take pretty quickly, we had a short wait but they over booked the bus by three people so we decided to stay back because the lady said the next bus was only a few minutes out. Apparently they don't have a sense of time in this town since it actually took an hour and then about another to get to our backpackers. We ended up staying in this converted trailer which was actually pretty funny. The guy working the station was irish or something which was cool. After all of that we were starving so we thought we would walk downtown and grab some food but we kept passing stuff that was closed. Finally we decided to go to subway but all the aboriginals were out on the streets yelling and it was a little scary so we hid in an art gallery and called a taxi. it only cost 5$ and its a 2.50 start up charge so we were really close but whatever. We already had someone yell SLUTS out their window towards us so we all decided the taxis were safe.
Subway was delicious as always and we grabbed a
taxi back to our backpackers and I watched the end of Ellen and then friends and met this guy from Malta, a country under Italy. I had never heard of it either, but he was nice and we were just chatting, but then I decided to go to bed since we had an early start.
In the morning we went to go on a bus that turned out not to be ours, it was going on a 3 day trip, not the one day one. I can't imagine going on a three day trip, there were a lot of flies in Alice Springs.
Those flies didn't even compare to the flies that were in Uluru! We ended up grabbing our bus, with Tic and Jason who were both really nice with a sarcastic sense of humor so the day was pretty funny. We made a pit stop and grabbed morning tea but I just got off the bus to stretch my legs, there were so many flies! Jason wiped off our backs as we got in the bus so we didn't bring as many flies with us. Then we got off again just to look at this huge
man made rock. Meghan had been sleeping and didn't hear and was like this is it? this is how close we're getting?! (we were pretty far away) I should have gone with it, but I was nice and told her what it actually was.
On our way, early in the morning there was a solar eclipse, we didn't stop to see it or anything but I could see it out my window. I've never actually seen one before so it was really cool. I remember reading tangerine and how you aren't supposed to stare at it but I did anyway. It was so hard to take a picture! I wanted to remember it.
Once we actually got to Ayers Rock, we first went to the Olgas which as the humpy bumpy parts, basically other rocks with four humps. We got off and walked between two of them. I didn't realize how far we had hiked until we were walking back! it was so gorgeous. One of things you just kind of have to look at and thank god that its there. It was hard to truly appreciate because there were so many flies in my face that I
had to keep wiping away, so I took a bunch of pictures instead. On our way to Uluru, we stopped at this culture center. Its really bad to climb the rock and the aboriginals don't like it so it's basically been cursed. If you climb the rock, or take pebbles/sand from it, you are doomed to have bad luck. Inside the center there is a "sorry" book which contains apology letters from a bunch of people who have taken rocks/sand etc. A lot of them enclosed what they took and apologised and discussed all the bad things that had happened to them.
Once we got to Uluru, Tic and Jason took us on a bunch of different tours around the place. I found out that 2/3 of the rock is actually under the surface! It has a lot of aboriginal culture associated with it which was so interesting to learn about. There are 8 sacred parts of the rock including a birthing hole. All the different markings on the rock have stories behind them which they told us all about. On one of the tours with Jason, there was this guy following us and Jason called him out on
it, about how its not fair because we paid for it. I was trying really hard to withhold my laughter.
After we toured the rock, we drove out and had a BBQ with a view of the rock. At sunset, the rock changes color because of the reflection of the sun. It was gorgeous and another world marvel, apparently one of the wonders of the world someone said. By this time we had become accustomed to the flies in our face, but they made it very difficult to eat!!
Then we took the bus to Alice Springs, I read the book I took from the backpackers and we arrived back at like midnight. After that we fell right asleep. I can't imagine staying overnight in a tent with all those flies! I don't count myself as high maintenance but ew! We left at about 9am in the taxi and had a nice conversation with the driver but we were thankful to get on the plane away from the flies!
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