"it doesn't get much better than this" (in an Australian accent)

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We left the bustiling metropolis of Alice Springs on Monday. I'm not sure if i mentioned this but it was cold and raining in Alice Springs. Alice is in the middle of the driest part of the outback. Everyone who lived there was happy to see the rain, they've been a a drought for a few years, but still funny that it rained while we were there.
Rachel, Uwe (pronounced oo-ver)and i got on the bus. Uwe has been with us since we left Adelade. He's german and fairly quiet. We know very little about him, but he is good company, really nice (he burned our photos onto cd's for us) and fun to have on bus trips. Tim, our guide, resembles Crocadile Dundee a bit. A country Aussie bloke, and as the trip went on we saw just how much so. He wore his hat swimming. I'll mention him more later. His friend Daylight, a very chill and quiet bloke. The rest of the cast of characters... Susie from london, Jon from Holland, Yugi from Japan, and the japanese couple. 10 people total.
So after an interesting loop around Alice springs, which included a stop at Tim's to pick up his dige, whip, a second hat and fishing pole we finally headed off. There really is nothing between Alice Springs and Devils Marbles. We camped behind a pub near the devils marbles. After a good dinner of "spag bol" or as i call it Aussie pasta, we chilled by the campfire with another Wayward group then headed inside to play pool. Why is it that no matter what country you are in, if you are the middle of nowhere, Country Music is played? This pub was no exception. As rachel noted, one of the locals must have drank a whole keg by himself. he tried to hit on everyone female, but that ended when he got too drunk. It was good times.
We got up for another sunrise, this one at Devils Marbles. So in the middle of the outback are these totally round granite balls, just chilling. And there are a good 40 or more of them dotting the landscape, some balanced, some by themselves. Really cool.  We ate breakfast by the marbles, climbed on them and around them, suspended ourselves between them (i'll upload the photo at some point) before hitting the road for the long journey to Mataranka.
We got to Mataranka right before sunset. We all went out onto an abandoned runway by our campsite, where there were lots of wallabies chiling out. As the sun started to go down the sound of the bats got louder. The bat colony out there is approximately 2million, and over the course of 20 minutes as the sun was setting all of them got up and flew off into the sunest. It was unreal. There were black flapping spots all over the sky, tinting the sky black almost. This descrption doesn't do it justice at all because it was one of the coolest things i have ever seen.
Dinner was stew, cooked in a cast iron pot in the fire pit. It was actually really good. After the stew and rice we all put on our bathing suits and headed to the hot springs for an evening swim. We visited the turtles, then it was swimming in the pal tress under the full moon. And as Tim kept saying "it doesn't get much better than this!"

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