Adventure tour in the Red Center… in style!

We just arrived in Darwin after four incredible days in the Great Outback!

After the mountain biking in Peru, this was Alessia's second biggest proof of love of the whole trip: three days of 4WD Safari, lots of long walks and two nights of camping in tents (with shared bathrooms!)… Definitely worth a few massages in Bali when we get there to compensate! Fortunately we had booked the "in style version" of the tour with a few welcome extras, such as a hostess to cook meals, real beds and linen in the tents and champagne / wine at dinner! It was no luxury but still made the trip a little more comfortable!

We decided to use Alice Springs as our base in the Red Center, allowing us to see more than if we had directly flown in to Uluru (Ayer's Rock). We spent the first afternoon in town to get ready for our expedition… and to do some urgent laundry!  Apart from that, and maybe visiting a few Aboriginal art galleries, there was actually not a lot to do in Alice Springs, especially on a Sunday afternoon with most of the shops closed… a ghost town traversed by a ghost river, as you will see from the pictures. The restaurants didn't inspire us too much either, so we ended up having a soup and a salad in our hotel room!

We woke up the next day at 5am (in the middle of the night for François), to be picked-up by our large 4WD truck… Half asleep, we met our adventure "mates": Alessandra, Marco, Barbara and Franco… (yes, four Italians!), two other very nice Australian couples, as well as our guide, Karla, and our chef, Nora! The first stop, at François' insistent request (everybody else was sleeping), was to take some pictures of the sunrise. An hour later, we took another quick break at a camel farm for a coffee… We didn't know this, but Australia imported camels from Africa in the 19th century to build roads and telegraph lines... since other means of transportation are now available, thousands of camels are running freely around the Outback! After a very long and monotonous drive in the middle of the desert (about 500 km), we finally made it to our camp site in Uluru for lunch. We first caught  our first glimpse of Uluru (Ayer's Rock) to then go on a really beautiful three-hour trek to explore Kata Tjuta, also known as the Olgas (the explorer who discovered them had a crush on a Russian princess and gave them her name)…  We had to speed-up our pace a little around the end of the hike though, as we had another important appointment we absolutely could not miss: the sunset on Uluru… "in style" with some champagne: simply breathtaking! There, we toasted with a Japanese couple who was also on honeymoon (some difficult conversations, as they didn't speak a word of English). Back at the camp, we were treated with some camel and kangaroo meat and finished this great day with a bonfire and a few roasted marshmallows…

After a chilly night in our tents, we woke up the next day again at 5am… in order not to miss the sunrise on Ayer's Rock! It was definitely worth the wake-up call: François played around for a good hour with his new "toy" camera to get some changing light effects "à la Van Gogh" on the rock. After that, we went for a quick visit of the Aboriginal cultural center before literally power-walking the nine kilometers around Uluru in less than an hour and a half (some people from our group had to be dropped off at the airport). Along the way, we managed to take a few pictures of Uluru from up close, but only where it was allowed: the rock is sacred for aboriginals and most of it cannot be photographed, bringing bad luck for those who dare to do so! After some camel burgers at the camp ground, we then hopped back in our sturdy (and very noisy) truck towards King's Canyon. Along the way, we got a glimpse of the Connor range and made it for another beautiful sunset!

You will have guessed it, the night at King's Canyon was again very cold and short: we woke up at 5:30 this time, a whole half-an-hour more than usual!!! We started the day with our longest trek of the trip: 4 hours up and down the canyon, but completely fascinating especially thanks to Karla's storytelling! You will see Alessia posing like in the movie "Priscilla Queen of the Desert" (shot here). After some Australian Burritos made by our chef from Wisconsin, we then took the truck for some real 4x4 on the corrugated roads back to Alice Springs… Passing by Gosse Bluff (a fallen meteorite) and the Mac Donnell Ranges, we saw some Dingo's (wild Australian dogs) and wild camels, but still no signs of kangaroos unfortunately! We will definitely have to come back to Australia.


Red Center Pictures