It's actually in the middle of nowhere! The nearest big towns are Adelaide which is 1500km south, and Darwin which is 1500km north. It's a bit like living in Colwyn Bay back home in Wales, and the nearest town being Rome in Italy!! Crazy!
And the weather is SO different to Melbourne! Since I've been here there have been 9 days in a row where the temperature has got to over 38 degrees!
Anyway, the main purpose of this blog is to write about an amazing tour I did when I first got to Alice Springs! My friend Shweta works for a company called Wayoutback and booked me a 3 day 2 night desert safari where I got to see Uluru (Ayers Rock), Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) and Kings Canyon. It was so good!
If you look at a map it looks like Uluru is right next to Alice Springs, but in reality it is a 5 hour drive away! Really highlights how huuuuge Australia is! So on day one I got picked up by Annabelle our tour guide in a really cool 4 wheel drive bus at 6am to begin the journey to Uluru!
The bus - so cool :)
We got to our campsite in Yulara at midday after stopping at a camel farm on the way! We also made a quick stop to collect fire wood for our camp fire that evening, which involved driving along a bumpy dirt track which was cool!
Camel farm!
After lunch we drove over to Uluru to get our first view of the rock! It was pretty impressive, the landscape is really flat then suddenly there it is! We spent the afternoon walking around the rock with Annabelle telling us some stories about the history of Uluru for the start of the walk. It was really interesting to hear all the different stories about the aboriginals. It was cool to see some of the caves with children's aboriginal paintings in them too.
Start of the walk!
Cave paintings.
The aboriginals leased the land to the government for 99 years, with the expectation that their culture and heritage would be protected, so something that really surprised me was the fact that visitors are allowed to climb Uluru. I found that to be quite disrespectful as the aboriginals discourage the climb as it is a very sacred place to them, and it is also dangerous to climb.
Another thing that I found really interesting was the size of Uluru. I knew it was around 350m high, but what I didn't know was that it has been predicted that the rock continues for around 6000m underground! So it's pretty big!
Uluru!
After our guided walk we continued to walk around the rock for another couple of hours in about 37 degree heat! It was not easy, and I was actually quite glad to get back to the air conditioning on the bus when we finished!
Our next stop was a lookout point to watch the sunset! It was amazing, the rock actually seems to change colour throughout the day and at sunset it was really red! After a glass of sparkling wine, some nibbles and lots of photos, we headed back to our campsite!
Uluru sunset :)
After a yummy tea of kangaroo bolognese cooked on the campfire, it was time to set up our swags for the night!! This was something I was really looking forward to! For those of you who don't know what a swag is, it's basically a big sleeping bag with a mattress inside so you can sleep out in the open under the stars! I think that first night was one of the highlights of the trip for me as I just lay there and watched the stars for ages. The sky is so clear in the centre of Australia so there were sooo many stars! I even saw two shooting stars! It was amazing :)
The next day we were up at 4am to watch the sunrise! We had a quick breakfast, packed up the campsite and set off to a lookout point inbetween Uluru and Kata Tjuta. The view was amazing! It was so cool watching the sunrise as I've never actually sat and watched one before!
Sunrise
After sunrise it was time to go to Kata Tjuta to do "The valley of the winds" walk which was 7.4km and took about 3 hours! Luckily because we got there so early, it wasn't too hot for the first couple of hours, though I struggled a bit towards the end as there wasn't much shade! It was a really good walk though. I preferred it to Uluru as I found the scenery a bit more interesting! There was more climbing in this walk too rather than the day before which had been completely flat.
Kata Tjuta!
By the time we had completed the full circuit it was getting really hot, but luckily the place where we had our picnic lunch had a swimming pool, so we had a quick dip to cool down before starting the long drive to Kings Canyon!
It took about 4 hours to get to our Kings Creek campsite, which included another fire wood stop, and a quick stop at a viewing point to see "foolaru" - another big rock in the desert that a lot of visitors make the mistake of thinking it is Uluru!
"Fooluru!"
The campsite was pretty different to the night before!! It was definitely "wayoutback" as it was really far away from anything, and we just had 1 outdoor toilet, and 1 outdoor shower, both full of ants! Which wasn't fun as the ants here in Australia bite! It was a fun experience though, felt very Australian! And Annabelle even made us traditional Damper bread on the camp fire! It was yum!
After another good sleep in my swag, and plenty of star gazing too, we got up at 5am to pack up to go to Kings Canyon. It didn't take us long to get there so it was another morning walk which meant slightly cooler temperatures. The Kings Canyon walk was definitely my favourite of the three. It was 6km and took about 3 hours. The scenery was stunning, I've never been anywhere like it! Everything was so red and rocky! The start of the walk was pretty difficult as we had to climb quite a steep hill (many visitors call this "heart attack hill"!), but after that it was pretty easy.
"Heart attack hill!"
Took lots of photos of the canyon and then walked around to the "Garden of Eden" which is a small waterhole which you can swim in. But unfortunately because there had been no rain, the water was a bit yuck so we didn't swim! It was nice to have a sit down and eat some biscuits though! After we had regained a bit of energy we continued the walk round the canyon and got back to the bus.
Garden of Eden
Kings Canyon!
Lunch was a traditional Aussie BBQ which was the perfect end to our trip! After filling up with sausages and burgers we started the long journey back to Alice Springs! On the way back as we were driving along we spotted a group of camels all under a tree getting some shade! Was pretty cool!
Camels!
It was such a fun tour, and so different to anywhere else I've been to in Australia!
Since being back in Alice Springs I've managed to get myself a job! I'm working in a backpackers hostel on reception which is quite good, I get to meet lots of people :)
Also went on a road trip to the West Macdonnell ranges with Shweta which was fun!
There are still a few things in Alice Springs that I am yet to do, so once I've got exciting things to write about I'll update this again! Bye for now! :)
