"Many faces I have seen
Many places I have been
Walked the deserts
Swam the shores"
Gosh, haven't been able to update blog after I left Darwin and that was...week ago. Time has really started to fly here. So what's going on? What has been happening? Well, from title of this entry you can figure out that last 7 days have been full of travelling and very little rest. Today was actually first day since friday last week when I didn't have to wake up before 6am!
But lets get on with the story, so much to tell. I could sit here and write for entire day but instead I try to keep this very very short...I gotta have stories to tell when I get back home someday :)
On saturday August 2nd I woke up very early to leave Darwin and head to Alice Springs with the legendary Ghan Train.
Here is shot from interior lounge.
This trip turned out to be biggest disappointments so far. Price was insanely high, seats were not even remotely good, food sucked, beer was expensive and since most the time we travelled during nighttime the views weren't great either. Besides, I was sitting next to this....um, big guy who took 1.5 seats so I had very little room to sit in. Crappy 26h if you ask me.
So next stop was Alice Springs. I had heard tons of bad stuff about the place, all related to problems with piss-drunk aboriginals rioting the town. It turned out that Alice Springs was heaps better than its reputation...which still didnt make the place spectacular. City council had started a program from January 2008 to clean up the city. For example I couldn't even buy beer without passport and they insert every alcohol purchase into city's computer system! Here is shot of the city from lookout.
I only stayed in Alice Springs that day and on next morning at 5:30am I departed on 2-day tour to Kings Canyon and...the first "Big Thing" of this trip, Uluru aka Ayer's Rock. This trip turned out to be the best so far. Allthough much of it is credit to lovely and chatty english girl Catherine who sat next to me in bus. I had really good time and 800km bus ride didn't feel long at all. Our first stop was King's Canyon.
Views were nothing short of stunning, I especially liked these rock domes. This area is called "Lost City" btw.
After King's Canyon we headed to our campsite close to Uluru. We slept the night in swags under stars while it was close to 0 degrees during night, pretty f'ing cold if you ask me!
Next morning we got up at 5am to see sunrise at Uluru. I seriously had butterflies on my stomach, and not only cause of that bottle of Johnny Walker's which we drank at the campfire last evening. Uluru is after all one of the most iconic places in world and now I was able to see it. After about 4km walk from parking lot to base of rock we waited for sunrise while temperature was just barely above 0. Below are 2 pics, first just seconds before sunrise, second just seconds after sunrise, I'm sure you notice the huge difference even from my crappy pictures.
Rock literally started to glow red when first sunrays hit it. It was...very magical experience, loved it!
Finally the postcard view with our tour group. Fantastic people every single one, we had such hilarious time.
So, back to Alice Springs from Uluru. I was back at hostel at 7pm and my next adventure, roadtrip to Cairns was set to start next morning at 5:30am. So, again a night with little or no sleep. First day of the roadtrip was quite an experience again, over 800km on road without seeing single city or even structure, just miles and miles of...nothing. Only "sight" was basically this huge termite mound.
...and then there was hours and hours of...nothing.
Our first night we stayed at ranch in middle of nowhere. That homestead was great, they had this adorable kangaroo called Mary who loved toasts, ice cream coffee and beer!
Next day we continued with little more civilization around us since we were now in Queensland and getting closer and closer to coast. Yet still, there wasnt much there except landscapes started to improve significantly.
We stopped in few places during day. 2 of them are really worth mentioning. First was little place called Middleton, population 3. Yet, they still had pub there
! ...and I found new friend(Spotty) from there as well while enjoying morning beer :)
Other place worth mentioning was Winton, population 600. Winton is birthplace of 2 big things. First being Qantas Airlines and second is worldwide popular song "Waltzing Matilda".
On 2nd night we stayed at small township...I just cant remember name. Basically we got shit drunk in the only pub town had with some locals while playing pool and abusing jukebox. Was really fun night!
On last day we started to enter the tropical part of Queensland so the scenery changed quite a lot.
We ended the trip with 4km walk through authentic rainforest to a waterfall. Water was freezing cold but since one other guy in our group decided to take swim, I just had to as well :)
Finally traditional group shot at that last waterfall.
So what now? Now I am in Cairns, but I feel like there is material here enough for one entry so I'll write more about this shithole...erm, Cairns on next entry.
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