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hi all together,
back in civilization ... arrived yesterday in alice springs after 8 days full of outback from adelaide to alice ... was a great tour, had lots of fun
so, after only one night (or better only 12 hours) in adelaide i started last wednesday a guided tour through the outback ... 8 days and 2800 km ;)
after leaving adelaide we had a a long drive to our first camp site ... was about 500 kms ... for lunch we had an aussie barbie (BBQ), which was cooked by Pete our tour guide ... the aussies do really like barbies, there are nearly in every park public BBQ (some of them are even for free) ... the evening we stayed at Wilpena Pound at a camp site ... had a nice evening walk, unfortunately we missed sunset for some minutes ... slept this night outside under the stars in a swag and sleepingbag ... was quite comfortable, and as i have a real good sleepingbag it was also very warm
wake up at about 7, after breakfast we had our first big walk through the Wilpena Pound ... after one hour of sometimes climbing up the rocks we reached the peak and had an awesome view over the Flinders Range ... the way back was as hard as the way to the peak ... climbing down is even sometimes harder ;) then we drove with our lovely tour bus through the outback, had some short walks and were at some real great look outs ... this night we slept in a former hospital in bunkbeds and we met a other tourgroup there .. the hospital was in Angorichina, we had there again a barbie and 2 nice party games ... at one game you had to put as much marhmellos in your mouth as possible, starting with two (each on one side in the mouth) ... i played with Rebecca (an english girl) against two other people of the other tour group ... at the end, i had 16 or 18 marshmellos in my mouth, and after every round you had to say: "Chubby Bunny" ... i was real happy when i spitted out the marhsmellos as they caramlized in my mouth and this was real real real sweet ... i think, i will never do this again ;) ... the second one was a little more sportive, you had to pick up a cereal pack only with your mouth without touching the ground with your hands or knees ... so you have to be stretched very well (as i'm not stretched enough, i wasn't good in this game) and after the pick up you have to tear a piece of the pack to make it more difficult to pick it up again ...
the next day we could ride a bike for some kilometres through the Gorge. unfortunately my brike broke down after a couple of minutes ... one bad thing in the desert are the flies ... they are everywhere, and Pete told us, it will get worse the next days .. but we should be happy, that we didn't do this tour in summer, because at this time it's real awful with the flies (and of course with the heat in the desert) ... this day we visited a coal mine, visited the weird guy Talc Alf who teached us in symbols and letters (like in school *g*), saw some parts of the Old Ghan Railway (which connects Adelaide and Darwin through the desert) and then we visited an aboriginal art centre where some of us bought aboriginal paintings ... shortly before we reached our night camp site in William Creek we had a short bath in a thermal spring ... the "pool" was maybe 1,5x1,5 metres .. and of course lots of flies again ... they are really annoying ... stayed the night at William Creek, a village with 8 residents ... they have a pub, a gas station, a camp site, a public telefon and a 9 hole golf course ... you can find very often golf courses in the desert, they play on sand and instead of the green, the put some black oil on the ground to avoid the grass tussocks from growing
the 4th day we arrived at Coober Pedy, the opal capital of the world ... in the early 1900's a 14 year old boy hit on opal and this was the beginning of Coober Pedy (which is aboriginal and means: white men in a hole) ... people in CooberPedy live in dig outs, there is an underground 4 star hotel with a underground pub, a underground church and many undergrounds bunkhouses ... we slept in one of these bunkhouses ... going around there can be very dangerous as there are everywhere holes as a result of 'noodling' (which means searching for opals) ... there are everywhere warnsigns because of the holes, some tourists had already fallen down and some had also died ...
the next day we stayed up at a quarter to 6 .. hey, i'm on holiday, what the f**k are we doing??? Pete woke us up in a real nice way: he walked through the bunkhouse and shouted: "Breaky" (which means breakfast) *g* the reason for this early wake up was to catch sunrise at the Breakaways ... this is an area just outside of Coober Pedy, the Breakaways are called like this as it looks like that this area has broken away from the main ranges .... in this area were also some movies made (Mad Max III, Pitch black with Vin Diesel - the shipwreck of this movie is shown in Coober Pedy) ... sunrise was awesome, the colourful play with the clouds and this weird landscape made it special ... after sunrise we had (or better Pete had) to drive about 700 kms to Uluru (Ayers Rock - Uluru is the aboriginal name and means meeting point) ... arrived there just before sunset so we got to a lookout and saw an amazing sunset ... we stayed there 2 days ... dinner was as usual excellent ... went to bed early as our wake up call will be at 5am the next day ... slept again in a swag on the red sand ...
wake up at 5, had some breaky (usually toasts, tea and some cereals or coco pops *g*) and then left for sunrise at Uluru ... many people were there, when we arrived at the sunrise viewing point it was still dark ... sunrise was at about 7:10am, took some pictures, my first picture with the rapid vienna scarf and Kata Tjuta in the back .. Uluru was too far away for a good picture ... Kata Tjuta (means many heads) are 36 rocks (or heads) and is a sacred area for the aboriginal ... after sunrise we drove there to have our first big walk today ... about 3 hours through Kata Tjuta, real awesome there, we had about 35 degrees (remember: australia is in the autumn) ... we were all quite tired after this walk but it was a fantastic scenery there ... after lunch we went to Uluru for our next big walk (about 9,4 km AROUND Uluru) ... the Aboriginal people ask for not climbing their sacred rock, so nobody of us did climb the rock, but we saw some respectless people who did the climb .. moreover it's also very dangerous ... before the walk we informed us about Uluru and the Aborigines in the culture centre ... only 20 years ago Australia gave Ayers Rock back to the Aborigines, since then it is called Uluru ... sunset at Uluru was again wonderful, but unfortunately a bit cloudy ... nevertheless, it was beautiful ... as it was a real tough day we all went to bed quite early (after once again a real tasteful dinner of Pete)
on day 7 we drove to Kings Canyon (like Grand Canyon but much smaller) ... we had a big walk there over the Canyon ... at the beginning we had to climb up for about 20 minutes real steep rocksteps ... when we arrived at the top of the canyon the view was breathtaking ... then Pete played a joke on us (only the male) ... the night before, he had a private chat with the girls and said to us we will know the next day ... he told us on the canyon that we are now entering a sacred women area, only women are allowed there .. so we had to ask the girls for permission to enter this area, they denied and said we have to dress like girls if we want to enter there ... so the girls gave us bikini tops, skirts etc and we had to dress up ... James even got a mini from his girlfriend ... in this outfit we walked through the canyon and we got some weird looks from other people, but we had fun ;) then we got a waterhole called Garden of Eden, some took a swim, but as it was a little rainy and cold i decided not to swim (i'm little ill since one week, have a annoying cough and a littel sore throat) ... after 3-4 hours we got back to our bus and had to push the bus once again as it didn't start the engine ... it became nearly a routine ... nearly everytime before entering the bus, we had to push it ... other tourists were always looking on us ;)
the last night we slept in a little hut (or permanent tent) ...the week passed by so quickly .. and as it was quite hard i went to bed early ... on our last day we only have one more hike (a small one) and then we are going to Alice Springs
last day, i'm a little sad, because we were a great team, had lots of fun ... but i'm also happy to go back in 'our civilization' ... moreover i'm running out of clean clothes, need to wash urgently ;) the last day was like on holiday, wake up only at 7:30am, last breaky then some of us did a quad bike tour (i didn't because i did one only two months ago in thailand, moreover it costs 75 bucks, and i have to save some money) ... so half of the group only did a small walk to Kathleen Springs ... after picking up the other guys from their quadbike tour we drove to Alice Springs ... made some stops, one at Stuart Wells ... this is special because there lives a singing dingo .. unfortunately the owner of the dingo wasn't at home so we couldn't hear the dingo, but we saw some newspaper articles, the dingo is real famous in australia ;)
in the evening we had our last dinner together in a pub and finished out tour with lots of beers ;)
all in all, it was real fantastic, Pete was a great tour guide, even for me (and the french guys) it was sometime hard to understand ... but i really enjoyed this tour and i'm looking forward to Steven's photos (he is a professional photograph) ... i made about 400 pictures ... you can see only some samples in the photo album, the rest will be shown in august ;)
now i'm in sydney, will spent there 3 days and on monday i will fly to New Zealand ..
cu soon, christoph
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