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Monday 19th Feb:
Trying to budget on food now so this morning we had roll and cheese with and an apple for breakfast and lunch on the coach to Alice Springs. Before we left the rock we sent some postcards so please let us know when you receive them! The trip to Alice was ok but a bit boring as the view was desert for 5 hours, as you can see in the picture. When we arrived we noticed lts of aboriginals lived here and we were a bit apprehensive about going out. Our hostel was very nice however, our room was very clean and spacious an we had it to ourselves for the second night which was nice.
When we got there we were quite hungry, the bread and roll wasn't quite sufficient and so we wandered down the town to find a steak house but we were a bit scared walking too far down the town because of all the aboriginals and we were the only white people there and had been previously warned about them and not to go out alone. We made the right choice by going into the nearest place as we had a delicious meal of steak, chips and salad with a free beer for only $15 which is about 6 pounds! (the converter's coming in handy)
We walked home with a quick pace, Em trying to hurry Soph along as her legs wouldn't quite carry her after the steak, however when she was approached by an aboriginal her pace quickened! The reception to the hostel closed before we left and we were given a code to the gate to get in. As we reached the gate we were being followed by this guy and so while Soph distracted him by giving him false direction Em frantically tried to open the gate but in a panick got the wrong gate and were trying to open the gate into the local travel shop! luckily no alarms were set off! When we finally reached our gate the guy had got the hint and had dissappeared and we were relieved to get in safely. As you can probably tell, our first impressions of Alice Springs were not good.
When we got into our room we decided to move the mattresses around to get the coolest position in the room. So we ended up with all four mattresses on the floor and both of us cracking up hoping the woman we were sharing with wouldn't now appear and walk in to her (and every) bed overturned. As you can probably guess....she walked in. Thankfully she was a lovely lady and understood what we were getting at. After introducing ourselves she told us her life story about her husband dying and had us both welling up. We are finding that a lot of people seem to be opening up to us and telling us our life stories! interesting to talk to different people but we are not getting much talking in ourselves Thinking of starting up a counselling business when we get home.
Tuesday 20th Feb (Happy Pancake Day!)
Spent the day in the town, which wasn't very nice as still lots of aboriginals who smelt pretty bad as they never wash in their lives! and were a bit scary. We went and bought apples, oats and milk for dinner, lunch the next day and breakfast - what a treat we were in for! Went to a place called 'Todd's Tavern' for lunch which was really nice - we're going for one good meal a day. We couldn't finish all our lunch so in our budgeting minds we wrapped the rest in a napkin and took it home for later to have with our oats.
When we got back we went on the internet to book our flights to Melbourne but after looking at the prices it was much cheaper to et the Ghan (a legendary train in Australia) to Adelaide and then a bus to Melbourne. This journey would take 20 hours however, but as it was cheaper we opted for the train but we had to book another night in Alice because it wouldn't leave for two days so we were stuck in Alice Springs for another day much to our annoyance. We also booked a bus from Adelaide to Melbourne for the second part of our journey too. This would take another 10 hours through the night.
Dinner was horrible and didn't fill us up - we'll stay clear of the oats next time! We played some magnetic games in our room to waste some of the evening and read some more of our books - we've read three novels each-got lots of time to kill on journies! Even though Soph started off doing well in our magnetic games Em seemed to pull through at the last minute and won all the games!
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