Four Days in the Red Centre

The view from the Plane

For Jared’s birthday, we took a few days off and spent a long weekend in the Australian Outback. First stop…Alice Springs (a small outback town known for two things... 1) a fairly large US intelligence center that keeps tabs on the communications of this side of the world in case any trouble is on the horizon and 2) the dry Todd river that only flows about 3 times every 20 years (excluding all of the grog (beer) that is consumed by the natives (as many live in the river bed)). I think it is fair to say that we both have walked through many big city streets at night and never felt as unsafe as we did walking the two blocks home from dinner to our hotel.

The next morning came quite early as our tour bus arrived to pick us up just after 5am for our three day Outback tour. Katie quickly learned that the next three days were going to be about as far from glamping (glamorous camping) as you can get. Starting our own fire, cooking our own dinner, sleeping on 1 inch mat under the stars, waking up at 4am, making our own breakfast, hiking 5-10K in 40 degree heat (about 110 for those back home)... repeat from the beginning...

However, we did enjoy sleeping under the stars, though. The night sky was absolutely amazing and unlike anything we've ever seen before (you don't realize how many stars and galaxies you can see until you find yourself a few hundred miles from the nearest light of any kind (and by light I mean maybe a night light at a gas station or something) and probably close to 300 miles from the nearest city (and by that I mean a town about the size of Claysville or Union City). You could see shooting stars, entire galaxies and planets. There is just no way to describe it.
We both stayed up most of the night just soaking in the stars, although it was partly due to being unable to sleep because it didn't cool down until well after midnight. For those that know Katie, trying to wake her up at 4am (anytime) let alone when she only got 4 hours of sleep is like hopping into a tiger's cage with 4 steaks strapped to your arms - you are putting your life in serious jeopardy. Thankfully though, the sunrises were breathtaking enough to spare Jared and our tour guide their lives.

While the heat (100+ each day) and dryness (8% humidity) were almost unbearable, the flies were enough to make you go insane. We lasted about 30 minutes before we broke down and bought fly nets, which preserved our sanity, but added about 10 degrees to an already unbearable heat... And were absolutely no help when it came time to eat our fly covered picnic sandwiches. Katie’s contacts were also shot from the dust and dryness and she decided that not being able to see was better than the pain of wearing them.

Our fly nets

Despite the uncomfortableness, it was definitely worth seeing. The first day we stopped at a cattle station and rode some camels (camels in Australia?...Yup, there's almost a million wild in central Australia), then made the 400K trek to Uluru (a giant red rock in the middle of the desert, which is a sacred aboriginal site), we did a short walk around the back side of the rock (not much to see, but we did spot a sand goanna lizard that jumped out as if he wanted to have a go at us before realizing it was probably best for him to find his way back into the bush) before making our way to the sunset viewing spot.

The second day was another hike…this time 7k around Kata Tjuta, another rock formation in the middle of the desert. The rock formations form the Valley of the Winds which provide shelter from the heat and are home to some good vegetation and sometimes even water holes. This time we started the hike early and were done by lunch to save ourselves from the heat.

The last day was yet another hike in Kings Canyon and then a little off-roading in the red sand back to Alice Springs. The hike was 6k and thankfully “heartbreak hill” was at the start of our hike first thing in the morning. Our backs were killing us by this time from hiking and carrying several liters of water on our backs. On our last night, we roasted a kangaroo tail on the fire and Jared tried a little. It was the complete outback experience.

The sun rising over Uluru