The big trip: Dingoes and spiders and snakes...Oh my!

After a grueling 3 days and 4 nights waiting on a tropical paradise island, I decided (at Michael's suggestion) to move my plans around and go to Sydney and take the Groove Method facilitor refresher course before prancing around the desert with dingoes and kangaroos....and snakes and spiders.

I am so glad I did. I frikkin love to Groove and cannot wait to get back to it for real when I come back to Denmark. :-)

Finally, we managed to get The Rock Tour (now running "The best tour in the world" ) to get Greyhound to honor our bus tickets from Adelaide. So a short flight to Adelaide from Sydney where we turned our clocks back one half hour (just when I thought I had it down, they go and halve it) and we were off on a 19 hour bus ride to the outback. One thing South America has on Australia, properly reclining coach seats for proper overnight sleeping. Ow, my back...

After arriving in Alice Springs in the afternoon, we settled into our hostel and walked around town a bit. It reminded me a bit of San Pedro de Atacama in Chile: A remote town built in the middle of nowhere developed to accommodate all the tours going to the most poular sites (Uluru) and surrounding areas "closeby."

We started our tour at 6am and drove for a good 5 hours (with a bathroom break somewhere in there) before reaching our first destination of King's Canyon. On the way, I waffled between trying to spot kangaroos and dingoes and falling asleep. No wildlife sightings there. After a short safety talk ("I won't even mention the snakes," said Greeny,our guide) we made our way up Heart Attack Hill. Not too bad of a climb. Pretty short, relatively speaking. No, we saw no snakes...

After a good two hours, we reached "The Garden of Eden", a watering hole promised to be free of crocs (the animal, not the comfortable but butt-ugly shoe). You know that scene in Crocodile Dundee where Sue is about to go into the water and asks if there's crocs, and Paul Hogan replies "nah, this is fresh water..." Well apparently, that's a bit misleading. Freshwater crocs do exist (although their snouts are too narrow to do serious damage to human adults) and saltwater crocs can actually survive in fresh water. But Greeny, an Aboriginie, assured us we were safe. So I jumped in. No wildlife sightings yet...Ah, ok ,we saw a goanna but I've seen those before so it doesn't reeeealy count... ;-)

After a refreshing dip, we made our way to the campsite, not before stopping to collect firewood. "Now, just watch out for the... No, nevermind, there are no snakes here." We didn't feel too convinced. Greeny had pulled into the side of the road, way into the side of the troad, so that by the time we had moved the swags to any available space inside the bus and filled the top of the trailer with firewood, we were well stuck in the sand. All us Northern Europeaners and New Englanders (well, me...) tried to offer our help by telling Greeny what we would do if this were snow. So, he pulled out the shovel and started digging. That didn't work... "How about adding traction by unfolding a few swags under the back tires?" That almost worked until the second go when they both got pulled into and wrapped around the tires, shredded and ruined. At this point, all our cameras were out and clicking away. Eventually, he listened to us, unhooked the trailer and got the bus out of the sand. With a bit of teamwork (we were beginning to suspect that a team building exercise was a surprise part of the whole outback experience) we managed to hook the trailer back up again to the bus, now free from the sand trench. For a moment there, we did wonder if anyone would ever drive by to help us (we were truly in the bush) and if they didn't, if we had to camp out right there for the night, until one of the locals made his regular Friday trip down that stretch of road.

After picking up three cases of beer (yay!), we managed to get to the campsite just after dark. The only thing linking this place to civilization was a campfire area, a frame with a corrugated aluminum roof (in case of rain?) and a toilet. Well, not really a toilet but just a hole in the ground with 4 walls and a lock. This is where I was certain to see kangaroos and dingoes! I was excited to sit by the campfire and spot one of the beauties hopping (or whatever dingoes do) in the background. Alas, this is not where I saw any wildlidfe...

We got the fire going, had a proper camp dinner of chilli con carne with beer, and settled into our swags to sleep under the stars, which were certain to protect us from all the wild things the outback had to offer (the swags, that is).

Now is the time to explain what a swag is. In some places, it might be all the fun brochures, bumper stickers etc. you get in a light travel bag at any given conference. But in the Australian bush, it is basically a body bag with a mattress. We were meant to tuck our sleeping bags into the swag, zip up both to the top, lay the extra swag flap over our heads and hope that the canvas was thick enough to keep out the 10 most poisonous snakes in the world, the spiders, all the other bugs, as well as the curious and possibly chili-breath loving dingoes.

The next morning I woke up, bite free, no snakes in site, only to hear of a girl who woke in the middle of the night to see two dingoes circling our site. Some girls have all the luck.

After packing up camp, we made our way to our first site of the day, the Valley of the Winds at Kata Tjuta. It was an easy trek but I was among the last due to excessive picture taking. We made our way to the Aboriginal Cultural Center where we were not allowed to take any pictures. In fact, there were a lot of areas the next day as we walked around Uluru that were "sensitive" areas and we were advised not to take pictures (or souvenir rocks for that matter, lest we eventually felt the need to send them back with a letter of apology due to the bad luck thrown upon us for disturbing a sacred site).

Toward the end of the day, we found our spot at the Uluru sunset viewing area and planted ourselves (Toohey's in hand of course) to wait for dinner and sunset. The rock really does look red at some point.

On to our campsite for the night, which was not very cosy, and we slept just outside a well lit roof area. The good thing about the place was that we could take hot showers and wash all the red dirt off of us, making way for new red dirt when we lay down on the ground for bed.

The next morning, we were up before the sun so we could watch it rise from behind Uluru. I'll let the picure speak as I don't do mornings and therefore don't really remember it. ;-)

The rest of the morning was rounded out with a 10 km walk around Uluru. A flat walk, again I fell behind due to excessive picture taking and searching for dingoes and kangaroos....and spiders and snakes (the last two especially whilst squatting). Nope. None.

On the short ride to the airport, I sat up front with Greeny, in a last ditch effort ( "I'm determined to see some goddamned wildlife!") to see something. Anything.... Nothing. I'm beginning to think that these so-called kangaroos and dingoes are just a marketing ploy from the Austrailian Tourist Board to lure wildlife lovers to this huge, huge country.

As we walked out on to the tarmac to catch our flight back to Sydney, I reminded myself of the lizards, possums, flying foxes, lorikeets, cockatoos and all the other cool birds and fishies that I saw in the wild during our trip (and of course the koalas, despite being in captivity). So if I have to make another trip to Australia to see a few of the other national fauna icons, I think I can handle that...:-)