Adelaide to Alice Springs

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Some pictures from the road trip from Adelaide to Alice Springs via Coober Pedy, Uluru, Kata Tjuta and Kings Canyon.

We left Adelaide at 6:30am in our Groovy Grape bus. We spend the first day driving and watching the scenery change from urban sprawl as we left Adelaide behind to the bush. We stopped in Port Augusta for lunch and then it was back on the road. Our first ovenight stop was at Coober Pedy a small town where 80% of the worlds opals are mined! The temperature can get into the 40's during the summer months so most of the towns residents chose to build their homes under the ground! This is also where they filmed Pitch Black and Mad Max 3 because it looks like outer space! We spent two nights here sleeping in underground bunkhouses.

We left Coober Pedy and our next stop was the Uluru campsite which is actually half and hours drive from the National Park. We didn't arrive in time to see the sunset on our first night so we set up camp, cooked dinner over the camp fire then we all got in our swags for a night sleeping under the stars. We were up bright and early the next morning at 5am so we would get to see the sunrise over Kata Tjuta. It was great to have our breakfast watching the sunrise over Kata Tjuta. We hiked the majestic Valley of the Winds with its incredibly ancient rock formations before returning to camp to spend the rest of day soaking up the magic of Uluru before heading out to see the sunset. There are on average at least 400 people watching the sunset at Uluru everyday.

After another fantastic breakfast we enjoyed a walk around the base of Uluru and spend time learning about the Aboriginal people at the Cultural Centre where we had lunch. Then we headed off again to the Kings Canyon campsite for the night. We were up bright and early on our last day we must have been getting use to the 5:30am starts. Or maybe it had something to do with the 10 degree drop in temperature during the night it was cold enough for jumpers as we set off on our last walk. We walked Watarrka (Kings Canyon) and experience the fantastic views of the Gorge, huge sandstone walls and the immense canyon floor.

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