Oz's Red Center

Nothing like ending my year by uber super mondo way way way procrastination. Yanno, like, this post.

On the 6th of December I flew to Alice Springs from Cairns, and began a three-day tour of Australia's Red Center the following day. The tour itself was mostly marketed toward the backpacker crowd. You can infer that we had many luxuries. Your inference would be wrong. 21 passengers in a 21-passenger bus, pulling probably 8 hours a day in said bus, sleeping under the stars, battling ants, 40 degree Celsius daytime temps, and picnic'd meals. It was a little rough around the edges but it was good times, and by the end we were one big "United Colors of Benetton" family.

As with most things on a grand scale, the pictures from Kings Canyon in no way represent its vastness. This shot does not show off its beauty either but I was hoping to provide some slight idea of scale with the human folk in it.

They say it almost never, ever, ever rains in the outback. Well it rained when we were looking for firewood. And then that night at camp it started to rain once I got into my sleeping bag. I thought I'd ride out the rain, how much can it rain, after all? Well my swag and sleeping bag starting soaking through and I called quits to head for the covering (where the ants were worse).

Our second day took us to Kata Tjuta (pronounced Kotta Joota) for a 7 kilometer hike that would take us through the Valley of the Winds. Once again, the scale and the beauty of this place is lost through my index finger and shutter.

 The actual Valley of the Winds. Quite windy as you'd expect.

Later that same day, we explored Uluru a bit. We camped overnight nearby and were up before sunrise in order to watch the rock greet the day. We had a sunrise breakfast then we trekked off to hike the perimeter of the monolith.

IMAGINE the size of this rock! And while you are at it IMAGINE that Sarah could figure out a way to get these three pictures in a row vice stacked.

Only two water holes around that whole big rock.

Original Aboriginal drawings in an open-sided cave. This is only about a 1/3 of them in this specific cave, they ran about 15 feet long and 6 feet tall.

21 tour takers: an American (me!), a Brit, a Canadian, an Aussie, 3 Koreans, 2 Thais, 2 Dutchies, 2 Fins, 3 Mexicans, 1 Japanese, 1 Italian, 1 Spaniard, 1 Frenchie, and a German. Our tour guide was, as you'd expect, an Aussie.