Back in Sydney

After 9 days away touring the Northern Territory, I`m back safe and sound in Sydney! There`s lots of tid bits to share, and I have a ton of photos! I`ll start posting some detailed blog entries tomorrow, but for now, short synopsis.

The trip to Alice Springs started off great. Our tour company, Adventure Tours, picked us up at the hotel I was staying at. We had 11 people on the first 3 day tour Darwin to Alice Springs. The main scenic highlights along the way were the Edith Falls, the Katherine Gorge, and swimming at Bitter Springs with sleepover stops in semi-permanent tents near Katherine, and Juno. It was a lot of driving, but I think it really made you appreciate this leg of the trip, where you really are in the Outback, where the essentials are cattle stations, petrols stations, and road-trains making it from one another (road train = truck with 3 cargo cars). Once we reached Alice Springs, most of our tour group stayed overnight in one of the main hostels, and would be joining a new tour for the second leg of the trip to Uluru.

The second half the trip really showcased Australia`s more well known landmark, Uluru (Ayers Rock). Yes, Uluru is just a rock, but it really lives up to being an amazing natural wonder! I can see why the Aboriginal people found it so spiritual. Our first day was spent with a stop at a camel farm, then continuing on to see Uluru at sunset (lit up all fiery red). The following day, we saw Uluru at sunrise (there were a few painfully early wake up calls), then taking a base-walk right around the rock! Finally, on day 6, we saw one more beautiful place, which was Kings Canyon, where I took a walk down the centre creek of the canyon.

Overall, the past 6 days were jammed packed, I did my best to stay awake after our campfire dinners to jot down as many notes as I could in my journal lol, and I`ll be sharing it all soon! There was one slight downer on the trip however, but I`m going to take it as a learning experience, which is when I woke up the morning of day 4 and didn`t feel too well after a not so great sleep. I think it was a combination of things, perhaps bad food the day before, a bad nights sleep, car sickness, or dehydration, but it was determined that I was probably suffering a case of dehydration when I got sick on the bus at the start of the 2nd leg of the trip :(. Luckily we had just arrived at a rest-stop, so I could take care of myself with a little dignity lol, and also bought some vitamin water and was supplied with a medicare packet of `salts`by my wonderful tour guide who looked after me closely for the rest of the trip.

Anyway, it took about a couple days for my `sickness`to run it`s course, but now that I`m back in Sydney with a shower and bed waiting, I think by tomorrow I`ll be all back to my normal self :). I`m just glad that it was a mild case, and was still able to take part in everything, even though I had to take shorter, less strenuous options, something I didn`t mind a bit, since I didn`t want to overdo it.

Alright, time for bed! ttyl! Glad to hear the Habs are stayin in it! I`ll be excitedly watching game 7 tomorrow morning!

Sarah