(I think my other three finals went pretty well, but my brain is a little mushy right now.)
So, as advertised, I went out to Alice Springs and Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park for the End of Semester break.
Our Greyhound was scheduled to leave at 7 am on Sunday the 30th, which is before the regular buses start running even on weekdays (the saga of my disgust with public transport in Townsville continues), but fortunately one of the (American) girls in my classes was going on the same trip and had found a ride, so I walked to Uni at 5:30 in the morning and we all (there were three other girls, total) went to the Greyhound terminal.
It's a LONG bus ride to Alice Springs... in the vicinity of two days. We stopped quite a bit, for lunch, dinner, refueling, bathroom breaks, dropping people off/picking people up, etc. We switched buses at Mount Isa and Tennant Creek, and slept a lot.
The girl I got the ride from and I spent a lot of time in gas stations, where we made a discovery: Australians don't believe in price tags. I think only one of our stops featured price tags, and not on everything. So when we felt like buying something, we had to walk up to the counter with it, say "how much is this?", find out that it was ridiculously overpriced, even for gas stations ($3-$4 candy bars), and put it back.
We stopped at one place that has a lot of giant statues... somewhat inexplicably.
We got to Alice Springs early on Monday, way before our hostel's check-in, so they sent us to wander around the town. They suggested we visit the reptile house, which has a very impressive collection of snakes and other reptiles. They also suggested we visit the Royal Flying Doctor museum, but it cost like, $7.50 for a tour, which was too much for a tour that didn't feature poisonous snakes.
The Scarf lurks outside the Royal Flying Doctor!
Eventually we wandered back to the hostel...
I knew that it was winter in Australia, but nobody told me that parts of Australia actually get COLD during winter, and certainly nobody mentioned that the desert gets cold even during the day. So I only had one pair of jeans and my hoodie with me for warmth, and the hostel wasn't heated. So I was freezing! Someone lent me a blanket the first night, so that was OK, but still. I don't understand why the rooms weren't heated, given that it is decidedly cold for half of the year.
Early the next morning the Rock Tour (our tour agency) picked us up. They were very insistent that we have 3 liters of water on us for the hike on the first day, which I would understand if it was the middle of summer, but it was way too cold to worry about losing that much moisture. Personally, I think they were just after the money, since they sold giant water bottles at the agency. (I don't recommend this tour company very highly... they also didn't really provide enough food for the 21 people on the tour. It was a cheap tour, but how does one package of salami for 2 group lunches work out?)
Uluru is about 5 hours from Alice Springs, so we set off... and our bus broke down about an hour into the drive, and it took them two hours to send a new one. Our guide had come down with a cold that morning, so he was in a miserable mood for the entire trip... also, I just found him kind of obnoxious in general; he was bossy and being ordered around for three days gets REALLY old really fast. He also rushed us the entire tour, not just the first day, even when we were making good time. I finally got so annoyed with this that I called him out on it. He didn't take very kindly to it. I'm not sure if he's always this annoying or if he was just sick. I was sitting behind him, so he didn't pay much attention to me when I wasn't arguing, but the poor girl who had to sit in the front passenger seat looked so fed-up...
Also on the tour were a quite a few British kids, a German couple, a French man, and a woman from Hong Kong... There was one Australian woman, and a few others whose nationalities I can't remember. The two girls who had grabbed a ride with my friend had been moved to another tour, so it was just my friend and I representing the Americans.
So, Tuesday, after we got the new bus, we headed to Kings Canyon, which, as the name suggests, is a canyon. It's a huge one (I think the guide said it was bigger than the Grand Canyon, but a lot of the stuff he said turned out to be BS, so take what you will from that), and very pretty. We climbed to the top and walked around the rim. It's really an odd place... it looks like some kind of other planet. The top of the canyon is mostly bare red rock, with these big dome-shaped formations. (The domes are called The Lost City because they look like ruins... they also have some spiritual significance in Aboriginal culture.)
You'll notice a lot of grass/greenery in all of my pictures. As luck would have it, this year was the most rain that this area has had in 50 years. I can't say that when I pictured my trip to The Outback that it would be green and cold, but on the other hand, I will assuredly never get the chance to see this area like this again, because it probably won't be this way again in my lifetime, so that's pretty cool.
The Garden of Eden is a watering hole at the foot of the canyon, where the rock starts to split. Even in dry years, it has water in it, so it's naturally a pretty important place.
We spent the night at a campsite nearby. We got Swags, which are these odd Australian sleeping bag things... they're canvas, with plastic bottoms, and have a little foam mattress in them. You snuggle up in your sleeping bag, zip the swag up, pull the hood over your face, and sleep. They're so you don't need a tent. Also, they're surprisingly warm and comfy, so I wasn't cold at night, at least.
Of course, it was a different story when our guide woke us up at dawn so we could get to our next campsite on time. (We didn't have breakfast until we got there, either. I was not the only person Not Particularly Happy.)
Wednesday, after breakfast, we went to Uluru National Park and went through the Aboriginal Cultural Center there, which was very nice (no pictures- not allowed).
So, remember how naive little me of February said that I thought Australians have a pretty respectful attitude towards Aboriginals? Yeah, that was a lie. A big one. Let me tell you about Uluru. It's home to a number of sacred spots, (only one of which is actually called Uluru, but that just happened to be the name that stuck) and traditionally boys would climb up it to become men. The Aboriginals were only recently given back the land (actually, the Aboriginals were only recently classified as humans under Australian law! That's right, it was legal to hunt them until 1959! Classy, Australia!). Right, where was I? Oh, yes, they were given Uluru back on the condition that they let tourists climb it for the next 99 years, because it's a big tourist pull and source of revenue. Apparently, if the climb is closed due to conditions for 1/3 of the year, they can close the climb permanently (but keep in mind this is something that our guide said, and a lot of the stuff he said was certifiable BS). There are signs all over the place giving tourists all the reasons that it's disrespectful to climb it, but they can't really stop them. Also there aren't any signs at the actual site. I suspect the government won't let them put any up.
Mmm, defiling sacred sites. Good clean fun.
The girl I was with and I didn't climb it (well, actually nobody in our group did, but there were some who kinda wanted to), and we both agreed it was pretty deplorable of the Australian government to keep it open. (We did watch a couple climb this, then watch the guy climb back down, get water, and climb back up to his waiting girlfriend, and that was romantic enough that we decided they were OK. No one else.)
We did a walk around part of the base, and the guide told a couple of Aboriginal stories about the different places... which was one of the few things he did that I really enjoyed... I get the idea that the stories are his favorite part. I wish I could remember the names involved, but... well. I at least tried to summarize them in the photobucket.
After that we drove to Kata Tjuta. Uluru is the largest single exposed rock in the world (I don't remember the world... Obelisk?) Kata Tjuta is just sedimentary rocks stuck together, and therefore not as impressive, but I think it looks pretty awesome.
We walked halfway through the Valley of the Winds track, so we see the whole thing, but we still got to see a decent chunk.
After that we watched the sunset over Uluru (Well, no, we watched Uluru as the sun set behind us, but close enough). It's a big tourist draw, so there were lots of
Back at camp, we played Eat the Box, which is a game where you have a cardboard box and you have to pick it up off the floor with your mouth without your hands touching the ground. Each round you rip a little more off the box. It was barrels of fun, especially since we were playing around a campfire and the best position for the box often involved leaning towards the fire. Also Team UK had bought some marshmallows, so we roasted those.
Fun fact I keep forgetting to share: Australia does not have the concept of a s'more. 1) They don't have Hershey's, they have Cadbury's, which is not the same, 2) their marshmallows are strange, 3) THEY DO NOT HAVE GRAHAM CRACKERS. Other American students have done some research into this and reported to me that the closest they have are digestive biscuits, which, if you've had one, you know are nothing like graham crackers.
The next morning we woke up before dawn to watch the sunrise over Uluru with breakfast. In theory that sounds great. In practice it was freezing, we were tired, we didn't have the means to make hot breakfast, and it was generally not worth it.
Afterwards we did the full walk around Uluru, minus the bit we did on Tuesday. It was a really nice walk, with the sun still coming up on the rock. Also there were some dingos howling in the background! I took a few pictures, because it was beautiful, but not too many because it's basically a bunch of photos of a giant rock. Don't get me wrong, its a nice giant rock, but it's still a giant rock. There are also some cave paintings in some of the caves, which are pretty cool, if only for how bright they are given how old they are.
We stopped briefly at Not Uluru (can't remember it's real name) and the salt flat next to it, basically to grab photos. I mostly liked it because we got to climb a red sand dune, and red sand is so beautiful. It looks unreal (I say that a lot... I suspect Australia isn't a real place.)
After that, we stopped at a camel farm (which also had an emu, kangaroos, and some llamas). My friend rode one of the camels, but I was fine just watching. There was a baby camel that wandered up to the store and made distressing baby camel noises. They also had a tame dingo, which I got to pet... I'm still a little uncertain that dingos are a distinct species... I have yet to see one that could prove it wasn't just a skinny dog.
We got back to our hostel in the afternoon, hung out, then met up with the rest of the group for dinner at a bar that I think is run by the tour company. Our guide had recovered by then and bought the whole tour a few pitchers of beer/wine for putting up with him, so I'm inclined to think he was just having a rotten week. Also the musicians at the bar had a digeridoo and played, among other things, "Don't Need No Education."
Our hostel put us in a heated room, which was nice, and the next morning my friend left to catch her flight home. I hung out in Alice Springs/ the hostel for a day, mostly studying. The other two girls got back from their tour (which sounded incredibly more awesome than mine- I was jealous), and we all caught the bus to Tennant Creek.
We get to Tennant Creek at 2 am, and the local hostel picks us up and gives us a room. It was a really nice hostel... not that it was fancy or anything, just comfortable. They had a huge collection of pet birds outside and a nice rec room with a kitchen and a TV and some DVDs and paperback books.
We went into town to see what there was to do, and came back with the impression that Greyhound has a deal with Tennant Creek to drop people off there for the day so that they can get some kind of revenue. We walked about a mile out of town to get to the Tourist Info place... which was connected to some mining museums. They cost to get in, though, and we didn't care enough to pay, so we just wandered outside and looked at their collection of old mine equipment, most of which was pretty rusty, but interesting.
We stopped at the single grocery store, with the logic that we would get bored and hungry on our upcoming 25-hour bus ride. I bought a bag of chicken-flavored potato chips (they're delicious! Don't judge me!), cookies, and more candy bars than I should have. (On the ride back, all three of us discovered that we had overestimated our ability to eat on the bus, and the last hour was to become a struggle to choke down all our junk food.)
We spent the rest of the day reading the paperbacks left by other backpackers and talking to the housekeeper/owner(?). I was planning on studying for my first exam... but the Celtic mystery/historical fiction I picked up proved more interesting.
We also made a journey to a place called (someone)'s Pizza and Fat Kebabs for dinner, because I had a coupon and I refused to pass up the opportunity to eat somewhere with "Fat Kebab" in its name. Pretty good pizza, I would recommend it if the Greyhound drops you there for a day.
Around 9:00 pm we made our way to the bus stop and started on the long road back to Townsville, eating our chicken-flavored chips and Cherry Ripes. By 7 pm on Sunday, we were back in the terminal. One of the girls had a ride set up, so we piled into his car and he took us to McDonalds... which frankly I was too sick from eating an entire bag of Chicken Chips to handle, but the cheapest thing to do was get the Secret $5 Meal, which is a cheeseburger, fries, and a sundae for $5. (In AU that's cheap). I still have the sundae in the freezer... I suspect that McD's ice cream was not meant to be re-frozen, so I think I'm going to throw it out.
Next day I was up at 7:30 to go to my Plant Survival final... which I think went pretty well, especially considering the circumstances.
Well, what with everything, I can't say this was the mind-blowing Most Awesome Trip of my time here, but it was still a lot of fun, and I'm glad I went!
The Photobucket contains all my pictures of Alice Springs and the snakes, King's Canyon, Kata Tjuta, Uluru, Fake!Uluru, the Camel Farm, Tennant Creek, and other misc. places from the journey. I had some hiccups uploading them, so they aren't all in order, but the captions should tell you what's what.
