Off Outback

Febuary 9th- 15th
Soundtrack: Awake My Soul- Mumford & Sons

Miles of empty land,  vast red grounds  sprouting brittle yellow bush, and towering orange rocks claim most of Australia's central land, a space bigger than Europe. I said goodbye to  Edward and Clare, and it was time to discover it for myself, by myself!

I was picked up from Alice Springs at 6.45 where I met tour Guide Julian and the first of my tour group Kim from Germany. Followed by Manon (Dutch), Alex (English), Facu ( Argentinian), Keimo (French), Liz ( French) and Jean from Canada. A lovely little collection of people and new friends to share the trip with! 

At times I felt like I was discovering a new planet; a day trip to Mars, ( only.. with a lot more life!) Camels roamed around freely, wild horses dashed off at the sight of our vehicle, there were eagles, kangaroos, wallabies, spiders and brown snakes; the most poisonousness in Australia. And despite all these dangers we still came across 2 female hitch-hikers alone on a 10 hour stretch of road. It blows my mind how 'care-free' they were, when realistically  the danger of them dehydrating was very real. Plus, any old crazy person could have picked them up! Luckily, we passed at the right time. That night we drove all drove to a camp-site near to Kings Canyon, shared Spaghetti Bolognaise and a crate of beers.

4 of the 5 nights, we slept in swags; a canvas sleeping bag on the ground, without cover or shelter from any of the creepy crawlies. The first night Facu climbed into his swag, and out crawled a hand sized centipede, 'aaah so many legsss!!'  

The 4a.m starts were quite a struggle, and by day 4 I was ready to sleep for a week, but instead we just had pizza and got very drunk! On day 3 I woke in the middle of the night to find 4 dingoes circling our camping area, and somehow managed to tell my self to ignore it and go back to sleep. I seem to be a bit braver than I imagined!

Kings canyon, Uluru and Cooper Pedi were a highlight. Cooper Pedi is an Opal mining village, where a large portion of the residents live underground, to avoid heat and sand storms, it was like Hobbiton, but without the greenery!

Heat robs you of energy, and flies attack from all angles, so why do we actually pay to go there? This is why-