Connections Tour-Day 1

Today I started my tour at Heavitree Gap, meeting up with the Connections crew there. Many of the people (about 1/2?) had started the tour in Sydney and gone up to Cairns, and were now doing the Centre. Everyone was very friendly! Lots of foreigners, mostly Germans and English--I was the only American! There are 20 'kids' and 2 'adults,' we've got a driver, named Geoff, and a cook, Allie, who are in charge of our tour.

We drove out of Alice bright and early (the tour meet time was 7 AM, I caught a 6:30 AM taxi). We stopped at a camel farm, where I took a short (5 minute) camel ride and got to pet a tame dingo. On part of the ride, I got to sit shottie and talk to Geoff. We saw a wedge tailed eagle, which was huge, and lots of roadkill ('roos, which have the habit of freezing in headlights like deer, and cows that wandered off their ranch). We caught a distant view of Mt. Conner (which is Australia's largest monolith, with a base of 32 k, compared to Uluru's 9 k base), but is not visited. It's because Mt. Conner is on private land (a cattle ranch). Ranches get huge out here--according to Geoff, there's a cattle ranch in the NT that's the size of Belgium. That's a lot of land!

We also drove over the Finke River, which is the oldest river on planet earth. Like the Todd river in Alice, it's dry except for flash flooding. However, the Finke River has salty water! It's remnants of the time when the NT was a great inland sea. The soil in the NT has a high salt content because of its ancient sea heritage. Additionally, the NT was once a rainforest (rather than the desert it is now), some time after the sea dried up. It's quite strange to think about...

We arrived at the town built just outside the national park, ate lunch, and then went to go hike around Kata Tjua (The Olgas). It's pretty fantastic, the 36 tall domes which are so perfectly rounded. In the Aboriginal language in the area, 'Kata Tjua' means 'many heads,' and is a sacred site for men. Tourists are only allowed to hike a small section of the area, due to the sacred nature of the area. What we did hike was lovely! From far away, the rocks look to be one large section, but are in reality a conglomeration of lots of smaller rocks/boulders. They were formed just as Uluru was, when an ancient mountain eroded and washed all its rocks into a pile, and then had the rocks compressed (long, long ago, like before there were any plants on land which would have stopped erosion like that scale). However, Uluru as we know it is supposed to be the horizontal of what was once vertical--a large quake evidently flipped the rock sideways. What's so impressive about Kata Tjua and Uluru is that they are like icebergs, where much more is underground than is above ground.

After hiking around Kata Tjua, we went to the sunset viewing area to view a sunset on the Rock. There wasn't too much of a show, b/c it was really cloudy. Additionally, there were heaps of people-- very crowded, and it's not even tourist season. Yargh. The rock was still pretty, and we enjoyed some nice nibbles while watching a non-existent sunset.

Got back, was frustrated with the layout of the rooms at the lodge where we were staying (we couldn't find where our room was! Bad layout on the designer's part. >__< ), and I promptly crashed for the night.

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