The Red Center....continued...one last time

The last 3 day leg of my journey to the center of Australia.  I didn't think I had many pics to show of this portion...I was wrong! Holy pretty pictures!

 Well this one ain't so pretty, lol.  From Alice Springs to Uluru, our destination, was a 3 hour drive, oy the distances are never small here.  So we stopped at a camel farm. Kinda cool, kinda smelly.  Camels are not native to Australia.  They were brought over because of their usefulness for traversing the desert.  Except now they run rampant.  Wild feral camels.  They are a big nuisance and really strange.  We saw one run across the highway that was foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog.  Our tour guide informed us that it was a male searching for a mate.  Strange.  They also pose a big danger when it comes to driving. Hitting a deer is one thing, smashing into a camel at 60-100mph...thats a whole nother story.  Because of this, much like most of rural Australia, driving at night is a hazardous risk that most people won't take.  I can't even imagine how annoying that would be to deal with if I lived there.

 I think I mentioned in the last post that we saw a huuuuge road train.  This is it.  I forgot I had a picture.  There are 6 trailers, all filled with live smelly cattle.


Our destination on day one:

 I present to you Khata Juta, or the white folk name:  The Olgas (much easier to pronounce).

 Khata Juta is the same type of rock formation as Uluru but not nearly as famous.  I think that's a shame cuz I think its more impressive and interesting.

 What are those dark clouds you ask?  Oh why yes, thats the rain we've had alllll stinkin day.  Yup, the rain we had in the desert.  Rain.loves.me.

 The sun started to come out while we were 'hiking' which made for awesome colors. 

A home among the gum trees :)

 Big rocks.

 Love the contrast here between the red rock and blue blue sky

 The end point of our hike, a cool view. For those interested, we are German, American, Swiss, and Polish here.

Khata Juta from a distance.

A salt flat, looks like a lovely refreshing lake.

Then it was off to the piece de resistance...Uluru.  The white man's name is Ayers Rock.  The land here where Khata Juta and Uluru is on is leased to the original owners of the land, the Aboriginal people, which is why there's its original name and then the white man's name.

 A giant rock.  I honestly have about 25 pictures of this rock.

 Just after sunrise.  It wasn't a very good sunrise anyway.  Notice the winter coats/multiple layers?  You'd never guess I went to the desert.

 Our big activity at Uluru was walking around it.  You can walk over it, but it is very very much frowned upon by the Aboriginal people and they ask you not to do it.  But the Australia gov't lets you.  It also just seems stupid dangerous to me, its like straight up.  So vertical that they put a chain half way up for you to hold on to, but you still have to make it half way up.

  Here Kevin rests from our strenuous Illinois-esque flat walk, lol

Pouting because a cloud covered our sunset picture.

 That night, we slept under the stars in swags.  Swags are Aussie bed rolls, basically this army canvas sack with a little mattress pad in it.  You slip your sleeping bag in it and wa-la you've got an outdoor bed.  Some people also say that swag stands for Sex With Aussie Guy, they are the perfect size for two very intimate people.  Word to the wise, if you're not that intimate with a person and they offer to share their swag with you=awkward!  Not that I would know or anything, lol. 

I tell you this because, while I hail from a cold weather climate I have never been so cold as I was this night. I think I still have flash backs to that night and the fear of losing my toes to frost bite.  There was frost on my swag.  The really annoying part was that we had no where to go to escape the cold.  There were the permanent tents we had in the Northern Territory, but they would've been just as cold.  It was (a frozen) hell.  I was never so eager for 5am.  I remember being in the fetal position in my swag with the hood pulled over to try to keep some of my body head in (which blocked the view of the stars, the only redeeming thing about sleeping outside) and every time I heard a noise (most likely dingos stealing peoples shit) I'd get all excited thinking it was time to get up.  I'd come out of my frozen cocoon only to see no torches lit and be sad and disappointed.  When 5am finally did come around, the tour guide got up and put logs on the embers of our fire. I jumped out of my swag so fast and stood IN the fire pit.  I'm surprised my cheap plastic flip flops didn't melt.

You think I'm complaining a lot now, you shoulda seen me that morning.  I thought it was going to ruin my whole day. I was really angry that there was no where for people to go to warm up...at the time I thought it was quite negligent.  But thankfully, my relief of getting warm did wonders for turning my mood around (quite surprisingly).  What also distracted me from my self centered bitching was seeing this: 

 Thankfully not our bus! But it was so cold that night before that the pipes froze (you thought I was exaggerating?) and burst.  Another group from a neighboring camp site (same company) saw only a small stream crossing his path but discovered a pretty large sink hole!  Our bus respectfully got out and laughed at all the people stuck in the bus and took pictures, lol.  (the passengers got transported to another bus so they could still see sunrise at our next destination).  This serves as a pretty good reminder of how shit can go wrong in the outback. 

 Our destination that morning is a favorite of most people.  It was my favorite of this trip!  Kings Canyon.  This was a pretty high steep climb to get to the top of the canyon even though it doesn't look like it.

 Sunrise :)

The sun may be up but its still bloody freezing!

 Macca showed me how to do macro shots.  One of his few redeeming qualities.

Our tour guide for this leg.  He was pretty cool.  Actually he was still in training, this was his first tour.  He was hard to get to know and never really seemed to be having a good time.  But compared to the other douche (and not in a funny way) that was training him, he was pretty cool.

 <3 this photo

 Kevin is perched precariously on the banister of the stair that lead to the bottom of the canyon.  Crazy Swiss dude.

 Reflection in the watering hole at the Garden of Eden.

 Garden of Eden watering hole (I'm pretty sure thats its name...something to do with Eden and evoking paradise)

 Straight.Down.

 I laid on my belly and scooted to the edge very slowly and looked down to get this shot.

The edge.

On the way back to Alice Springs we stopped at some random sign in the middle of nowhere and the underwear tree.  Random, and probably started by a bored tour guide, but I donated. 

The expanse of the outback.  Nothing as far as the eye can see.  It actually wasn't that strange to me, as much as it was for other people.  I think cuz I'm used to seeing nothing but corn as far as the eye can see, but still impressive.