Alice Springs

Big climate change, from the jungle of Darwin we arrived deep in the desert in the little town of Alice Springs.

The town itself seems mainly exist to serve the tourists. A lot of "Desert fashion" shopping possibilities! There are mainly two ways to spend the night here... we tried first the backpackers. One room with three beds and no space to walk ... but very cheap. The last day we tried the hotel beside the backpackers... comfortable, also very cheap, we didn't give the backpackers another chance.

We decided to do a 3-day desert trip.

First day...

It's the desert... to carry some water with you is a must. But we were very lucky... it was the first rainy day around here for seven months :). At least this made it possible to walk a little bit around the Olgas without anyone breaking down. Big red round-shaped rocks... very nice... so another must around here is probably to bring along enough films for your photo.

Second day...

After spending a comfortable night in some tents (you're not afraid of snakes, are you?) our next station was the Kings Canyon. I've got no idea which king did build this up, but he was certainly not afraid of heights :-).

And yeah - even in the desert you can sometimes find water... the waterholes are called billabongs here around. I've been totally finished from walking (it's been very, very hot) - so all i did was sitting there for a little while. But some other people used the chance to swim here.

Third day...

One of the most wellknown places in Australia is certainly Uluru - better known as Ayers Rock. We stood up very soon to see the sunset there... unfortunatly it was very cloudy so we didn't see that much.

As the rock was wet this day we were not allowed to climb it. This has some good reasons as the aborigines, who own the land around here, are very religious people. For every tourist who dies here (happens quite often ... the stones are slippery) they are performing a ritual which lasts for several days in which they cut theire arms and mourn for the dead person. As far as i understood this is meant to calm the rock again. Compare this behavior with our ignorance when some tourist is dying in our country! For this and other reasons they are not happy anyway on climbing tourists. Would be nice if more people would respect this.

But just walking around here is worth spending a day at this place.

Returning from the desert we noticed that we miscalculated our departure day from Alice Springs and that we had another day to spend here. We made good use of the time by tasting some local beers, eating some kangaroos and... well, drinking some more beers :).

Next stop Tasmania.

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