Alice Springs

Alice Springs is small but quite a quirky little town packed with all the essentials and is also the main hub for tours to Uluru. It is quite busy here so I had to wait 3 days to get on a tour but still managed to find things to do around town. I've walked up a hill with a Anzac memorial on top which gave me a great view over town (it really is in the middle of nowhere). I've also been to the Botanical gardens and saw Harry Potter at the cinema (rainy day!) and walked along the completely dry Todd River.

Uluru is something that I've always wanted to see but I was worried that it would be completely hyped up and I would be left disappointed. I thought that the 2 nights tour that I booked on would be 'here's the rock, take a photo and we will move on' tour but it was a million times better than I thought. The group and tour guide were fantastic and we had a lot of fun and it also turns out that I had picked the current award winning tour company. We drove for the entire morning down the Stuart Highway from Alice to Kings Canyon which gave us great views over the outback and into the canyon after we had climbed 'heart attack hill'. We had a much needed swim in the Garden of Eden pool at the base of the canyon and were greeted with a much needed burst of rain. Driving away from the canyon it was surprising to see how quickly the roads flood after what seemed so little rain. Apparently a lot of tour groups actually get stuck in the canyon due to flash flooding. The first night was spent bush camping in the middle of nowhere. It was hot in the swags and there were so many ants on the ground so I didn't get much sleep, still it was great to experience out back life.

Day 2 was another early start as we headed to the Ayers Rock Resort which was basically a town in itself, complete with every sort of accommodation imaginable and it even had schools. We were to camp here for the night and it was nice to have the addition of toilets and showers. We drove to Kata Tjuta which is the remains of a mountain range which just looks like a lot of huge mounds popping up out of nowhere. We walked the Valley of the Winds walk which is about 7.5km around a tiny section of the site. It wasn't particularly hard to walk under foot but there was little shade and the walk is actually closed after 11am as the temperature hits 36 degrees so it is considered unsafe. We actually started at 9am and were still walking until 12.30. It was hot! Our guide was great and really informative about this important aboriginal site and it was interesting to hear about the dream time stories and the aboriginal interpretation on how Kata Tjuta and Uluru were formed. The afternoon was spent with a dip in a swimming pool (complete with a dead scorpion found floating on top) and a walk around a section of Uluru. We did the typical sunset watch amongst the coaches and all the perfectly clean people sipping their champagne whilst we took silly pictures, dodged flies and drank our cans of beer. Uluru did look great as the sun was setting but the majority of people were too busy taking pictures of the rock that they actually missed the fantastic sunset behind them!

We woke up on the 3rd morning before sunrise to go to Uluru and watch the sunrise behind it which was nice. We then walked the 11km around the base of Uluru which didn't take too long. There are a lot of sacred sites that you cant take photos of and there is no explanation of why it is a sacred site so you walk around not knowing really what you are looking at. Our guide informed of of some of the stories and you can completely see why the aboriginal culture believe in them.

It was 42 degrees at least by the time we headed back towards Alice Springs. The round trip would clock up 1500km and was complete with a dip in a river the temperature of a bath and a 5 minute ride on a camel (you've got to do it once!). The tour was fantastic and I'm so glad I went as I learnt so much about the aboriginal culture and met some great people. We topped off the evening with a dinner and a lot of drinks in Alice Springs- great night. The only thing I was disappointed about was the fact that I didn't see a wild kangaroo!