Greetings from the center of Australia: Alice Springs (aka “The Alice”). I’m having to deal with rain for the first time in 3 weeks. A bit of a shock, but kind of nice. I’m just not looking forward to camping in it.
I’ve been doing mostly driving since I last wrote, but I have had some fun along the way. Many sections of the drive were quite beautiful with bright red soil and wildflowers.
Darwin turned out to be a pretty nice place to hang out in afterall. It has a very modern and cosmopolitan feel to it with plenty of nice restaurants and beautiful tropical gardens overlooking the bay. On Sunday and Thursday nights they have a big international food festival on the beach which includes lots of fabulous eats from around the world. It seems to be the place everyone decends to for a nice dinner while they watch the sun set over the Timor Sea.
The thing I disliked most about Darwin was the camping. Like most of the tropics, it’s always very hot and very humid. You lie in your tent sweating into your pillow in the evening waiting for the temperature to cool. And then in the morning you wake up cool, but drenched from the heavy tropical dew.
From Darwin I cruised down to Elsey National Park, a nice little spot with hot springs and plenty of places to swim with freshies. I camped there for the night before heading down to “Devil’s Marbles,” an unusual formation of giant marble-like red rocks. While visiting the area, I camped in nearby Wycliffe Well — a spot that claims to be the UFO reporting capital of Australia.
The owner of the caravan park there was quite eccentric with lots of half completed projects he was hoping would attract hoards of people to his middle-of-nowhere — including a lake (still being filled), a zoo of animals (including kangaroos, emus, camels, rabbits, birds, etc), and a 300 seat dinner theater (which looked vacant on a Saturday night). The one little project that seems to have garnered him attention was all the UFO murals and figurines around the place. Otherwise it was a pretty nice place. The only problem with sleeping behind roadhouses is having to deal with the noise of 54 meter (4 trailer) long road trains racing by in the middle of the night. They sound like airplanes trying to land on your tent.
I am now going to head west into the Western MacDonnell Ranges for a few nights of camping before heading south to Uluru.
