Alice Springs & surrounding area

Well we've been busy here in Australia, as you can tell from Sara's last update.  Since then, I've been packed, unpacked, repacked & HAD tons of clean laundry - gotta love fresh smelling clothes!

We left for the airport at 6am a week ago (Thursday) and got the 9.30am flight (aka the 10.50am due to high winds & heavy rains) and after a bumpy take off the rest of the flight was pretty smooth, apparently up in economy they showed the movie The Blind Side, down in the belly of the plane they showed nothing, what's up with that?

We arrived safely into Alice Springs, got a taxi to the Heavitree Gap Outback Lodge and planned our next 4 days.  That night Sara fed the local rock wallabees which come down the gap around dinner time to get fed pellets sold by the hotel.  The next day was the West MacDonnell range tour - so we saw, Simpson's Gap, Ormiston Gorge, Standley Chasm, Glen Helen Gap, and a few others I've forgotten now.

Following day was the beginning of the bigger adventure, a 2 day tour of Ayer's Rock, The Olgas & Kings Canyon. 2.5 hours after leaving Alice, we arrived at Erldunda (which is just a road house) and switched into a smaller van for the day in Kings Canyon, the weather was looking cloudy but not horrible . . . until another 3 hour drive got us to Kings Canyon Station (cattle station - only petrol shop for miles!) and they announced the creek might be flooded, but we decided to have a look . . . to make a long story short, we made it into Kings Canyon creek to find it flooded 1metre above the road & by the time we turned around Katherine's creek was flooded 1 metre as well, so we were trapped between the two creeks for 1.5 hours, till Katherine's creek went down a bit & we just gunned it & made it across.  The plan for the day totally impossible, we headed back to Erldunda for the night.  Next day we headed to The Olgas & Ayer's Rock, which we saw in the pouring rain, which is very unusual AND we got to see awesomely amazing waterfalls coming off the rock, which few people get to see in person :-)  Due to the tour failing the day before we decided to stay an extra night in Erldunda & go to Kings Canyon the next day . . . long story short, it had rained too much & now the creek was 2 metres high, so we came back to Alice Springs & saw some things in town.  Spent the night at Heavitree Gap Lodge & next morning got the Greyhound bus to Coober Pedy.

Arrived in Coober Pedy, found our underground motel & slept 6.5 metres below the ground - WEIRD!  Then took a tour of the booming metropolis of Coober Pedy, getting to do a bit of opal mining ourselves, well not really, we got to look for opals in already dug up piles of rock, & I found a few pieces :-)

Last night we got on the overnight bus from Coober Pedy down to Adeliade, where we arrived this morning at 7.30am & have been walking around till now.