When I got out of the plane last Saturday it was like a hair-dryer constantly blowing into my face... Day temperatures between 33 and 39 degrees, at night maybe just below 30. Every hostel has a pool and you do need it. It is the only place to hang out during the day.
Alice itself is a rather spread-out and boring outback town, practically deserted during most of the day when the heat is just too much. And it is supposedly much worse during summer when temperatures regularly hover above 40 degrees. I am very grateful I do not have to endure that! It is usually a dry heat though, makes it much more bearable. Wet cloths on a cloths line dry in about 45 minutes... The only real nuisance, though, are the ubiquitous flies.
I had decided to ignore my aversion of guided tours and go on a three-day camping trip to see Uluru and the other things around here in the outback. And I was very glad I did so! I really enjoyed myself. Our guide, Chris, turned out to be a real aussie bloke who told us first thing that we had to live up to his reputation to always have the noisiest, smelliest, dirtiest and most obnoxious groups. In order to make sure we would not underestimate the amount of beer we would need during the three days, he gave us a little example of aussie maths on the windscreen (which he never wiped after this and other drawing exercises), see here. So according to his experience on average everyone of us would consume 31 beers (he actually reckoned 61, since we did have a few German and Irish people on the bus)... And he was not too far off, since the beers did go down very well with the heat.
Chris was actually not just very good at beer-maths, but as it turned out soon also very knowledgeable about everything regarding the land, flora, fauna and Aboriginal culture. No question he did not answer without a wealth of information and personal stories. Besides that, he is also just a terrific personality. I am very glad I got to meet him through this trip. But this actually holds also for the rest of the group (the "family"), which was a funny mix of people between 19 and sixty-something. We got along very well and camping out in swags (the aussie equivalent of a bivy-bag, made of heavy cotton and with a comfy mattress) under the stars and sitting around the camp fire together late at night was truly great. Thanks to everyone for making this trip such a pleasure!
On the first day we visited Kings Canyon, an impressive gorge cut into the reddish rocks with some beautiful pockets of vegetation. We came into our camp after dark. Next day we drove on and enjoyed an impressive walk through Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) in the morning, a visit to the cultural center and some walking near Uluru (Ayers Rock). I decided to climb the thing, as the decision is left to every individual - despite some of the indigenous people prefer you not to climb the rock, it is not completely out of bounds as several other areas where you simply are not allowed to go at all. And I am very glad I did go up. The views were truly amazing. The climb used to be an important step for the male initiation process. Boys around the age of 12 were lead up the rock. And I believe being able to see the whole landscape around in a birds-eye view must have been totally exhilarating to these people who knew all the features of the landscape below so well through their nomadic way of living.
After that we had to rush off to the sunset spot where already hundreds of tourists were occupying every possible centimeter to take the obvious picture... But the view still was impressive. Camping again, very early start next morning at 4.45 am to be up for the sunrise. Quite beautiful. More walking at the base of the rock and then an other long day driving back to Alice through the desert. Arrival at about 5 pm.
If all goes well, I will be heading up north to Darwin in the next days. I got a lift with a French guy wit a camper-van. More soon.
