Advertisement
Published: October 24th 2010
I have a few weeks to kill before mum and dad visit mid November, and since I'm unemployed right now I decided spur of the moment to head out on tour for a week or so.
I arrived in Alice Springs around lunchtime and managed to catch up with Greg, who was the tour guide on my east coast tour back in March. He's now living in Alice Springs doing tours out of there. I was lucky enough to catch him in town, so he took me on a quick tour of the main shopping area of Alice where I brough a new suitcase and backpack, and then we went and had a few beers. We both had to get up early for tours, so it wasn't too late of a night. It was fantastic to see him though - he's got such a positive energy and is loads of fun.
Had to be ready to be picked up by the tour at 6am, and was lucky enough to meet 2 girls in my room at the hostel who were also doing the same tour, so we all got ready together and woke the rest of the room up
- lucky it wasn't just me. They are Lina and Rebecca from Denmark. So we went out the front to wait for the bus.
Travers (our 24 year old tour guide who was born and raised in Cairns) arrived right on time, and we were introduced to the rest of our tour people. There are 20 of us in all - 2 fun German guys called Max and Jannick, a German mum and dad and their 19 year old daughter and her 20 year old friend, a French couple, 2 couples from Poland, Heather from Canada, Meradith from the US (New Jersey), Regina from Czech Republic, Sabrina from Slovakia, a girl from Japan, and Rebecca and Lina from Denmark. I still don't know everyone's names, because some of them didn't speak english and we were all together for only 3 days.
From Alice Springs we headed towards Ayers Rock/Uluru, and our first stop was a camel farm where I got a chance to ride a camel, which is something I've wanted to do for years. It only cost $6 and was only for 10 minutes, but I loved it all the same. Camels are really big - they
Travers
Our tour guide for the first 3 days - awesome fun guy.are a bit scary but quite comfortable to ride. We had a little run as well which was more enjoyable than I thought it could be - especially as a girl had fallen off just before we went for our ride.
From there we stopped again at Curtain Springs, which is a cattle station in the middle of nowhere. We also stopped to take photos of Mt Conner, which appears out of nowhere and a lot of people think its Uluru. But it isn't.
We finally arrived at our campsite at the Ayers Rock Resort where we had lunch before heading back out to Kata Tjuta where we did the 7.4 km Valley of the Winds hike. Travers managed to stop the bus and jump off in time to catch a little thorny devil lizard, which is a really amazing and pretty little thing.
We then headed to Uluru to watch the sun set over the rock, which changes colours as the sun moves. It's very beautiful, but there are around 300-400 other people there too, so its not that quiet. Travers had a slightly secret spot to take us too though, so we weren't with the
On the road
from Alice Springs towards Ayers Rock masses thank God.
After sunset, back to camp for dinner, and then we could sleep in a swag around the campfire if we wanted. I was so tired I chose to sleep in a tent instead.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.146s; Tpl: 0.032s; cc: 10; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0618s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.1mb
