Day 109 - The Middle of Nowhere: Welcome to Alice Springs!

This morning we had a taxi picking us up at our house in Fremantle. We already packed in advance quite smart, because we didn't want to take our heavy and huge bags on a outback trip. As we would return to Perth for my dad's work after the outback week, we left our big bags in his office. The taxi driver obviuously did not completely understand what we wanted (drop of the bags, then proceed to the airport) and drove away with me after my father went away with the bags at his office. First I thought "okay, I guess he's just turning the car to have a better parking position". After a while we were already past two streets when I asked "sir, where are you driving?" - "to the airport?" - "sir, I'll go to the airport with my dad!" - "hold on. Whuuut?" - "yeah!" - "ooh crap! sorry!" - and we drove back to the original parking lot where my dad arrived after a few minutes...

Anyway, it was shocking but funny, and the flight was incredibly breathtaking. I was staring out of the window all the time, because every five minutes the landscape beneath changed: rivers, lakes, salt lakes, the soil becoming increasingly reddish, clouds, wildfires, most of the time nothing but sometimes tiny lonely villages of about five huts. Finally "civilisation" came into sight: Alice Springs, a little town of 30000, literally in the middle of nowhere.

 

This is ought to be a river in the rainy season. When
there's enough water, the annual boat race takes place
here which is quite famous in Australia.

 

 

Sunset watching from the Monument Hill in Alice Springs (which was the only thing to do there actually, especially when all the shops are already closed at 4 PM). Most of the people we saw in the streets were aboriginal people being drunk or buying alcohol or begging for money in front of the bottle shops. The taxi driver already warned us that it would not be too safe after sunset anymore.

 

Our Alice Motel was quite handy for our plans, as we had to get up early anyway because pick-up for our tour was scheduled at 6:45 AM the next morning. Except for the flying monster ants it was cute ;-)