Look familiar?
It's in the middle country, in the Northern Territory, about 450 km from the town of Alice Springs (population less than 30,000). Alice Springs itself is 1300+ km from any major city. Qantas is the only airline that flies to the resort near Uluru or to Alice Springs. Which means EXPENSIVE.
But I'm in Oz and with dad's encouraging thought of "What could be better than sleeping under the stars in the middle of the outback?" I spent October 10-13 in the red center.
I went with a company called Wayoutback, which was pretty fantastic because instead of getting crammed on a bus with 40 tourists, it was just the guide, me, and 4 other people in a 4WD vehicle. My fellow travelers were:
Rachel, 22, a recent Amherst grad who's traveling as much as she can to avoid beginning "real life"
Sally, 21, an English girl who already has a job and "real life" waiting for her at home but is traveling until that starts
John & Annis, probably my parents' age, a Dutch/Belgian couple who now live in France and are traveling around Australia for the fun of it, probably because their kids are finally supporting themselves
Wolly, 45, our tour guide and former children's counselor, who has finally escaped Melbourne city life and is working as a tour guide in order to see his country
I don't know how to make the trip sound as fantastic as it was, as I know the pictures can't do it justice. In our three days, we walked around Uluru, hiked though the giant rocks of Kata Tjuta ("many heads"), and explored King's Canyon. We watched Uluru turn from dull brownish-red to glowing orange at sunset. We saw sunrise. We cooked delicious kangaroo pasta and chicken stir fry on our campfire. We slept on the ground, outside, under the stars on a night when there was a new moon, so it was the best view of the night sky, the milky way, and shooting stars that I will ever have. We saw wild camels, lizards, and dingo footprints. We woke to dingoes howling (because there were caged ones near the first campsite, but we thought they were wild at the time, haha). Our second campsite was in the middle of a cattle station, overlooking red rock ranges, and miles away from any other campers - and it's hard to explain but at one point, when there was no wind, no flies, no one moving, I heard the most SILENCE I've ever heard. The walks were beautiful. Days were hot (approaching 100F and it's only spring! plus they haven't had rain since January) but there was almost always a breeze.
Here's my photo album, complete with captions:
http://gmu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2102515&l=c51b0&id=15600311
After our tour, we met up in Alice Springs for dinner at this place called Bojangles where the bathroom doors had fake handles and turning the handle of one sink turned on a different sink's faucet. I ate a mixed grill of camel, buffalo, kangaroo, and croc. The camel was tough. The kangaroo was good. The buffalo was my favorite. I insisted the croc tasted like chicken while Rachel and Sally insisted it tasted like tofu, vegetarian meat, and lobster.
The next day I wandered around Alice, climbing some hills to lookout over the town and the empty land surrounding it and laughing at the "Botanic Garden" that looked like the rest of the outback, but with boring brown dirt instead of red.
I flew into Sydney, where I stayed at the University of New South Wales with my friend Jocelyn, the girl from Mexico that I met on the Melbourne bus trip. I love that campus (it's so big and clean compared to where I am! There aren't broken beer bottles everywhere!) and I love that girl and I love that city. I even made my way to the famous Bondi Beach, where I took a surfing lesson, managed to stand up on my board, and absolutely freakin' loved it.
There's no photographic evidence that I surfed, but this is pretty much what I looked like:
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