May 21, 2001 - Monday - Alice Springs
Due to the missing digital camera on 5/20-5/21, photos will be scanned and uploaded once I returned to the States
We started early again today, trying to catch sunrise at Uluru but it was overcast. By the time we got to the rock, the sun started coming up already. We ran to the point where we could see the sunrise and some people got some glances of it, but the picture from it wouldn't show the rock at all.
The whole point of the sunrise in the morning is to see it reflect different color on the rock but the sun disappeared soon after appearing from the horizon. We started our hike around the rock and stopped at several historical sites to observe and chill out.
The climb to the rock was closed because the leading caretaker of the rock passed away last week and as a sign of respect, the climb was closed and all his pictures and mentioning of his names and other stories were forbidden to be revealed or spoken about during that period.
Uluru is a sacred place for the aboriginals and they ask the tourist not to climb the rock, but will allow it if a person really wants to climb it. I wasn't going to climb it anyway when I read about this last year but I guess things did work out. A few hours later, we made it all the way around the base of the rock and got back on the bus to head back to the camp for lunch.
It was late morning and no news of my missing bum bag. I didn't think too much about it until Alex told me to start preparing to replace all the items in the pack, which made me a little nervous. After lunch and after we drove out, Alex got a page and was told that they found my pack and will be waiting for me back in Alice.
I was pretty happy about it and the whole bus cheered when they heard the news. There were a few older couples - in their 40's at least - who just got married and it's great to see that people are still finding love at that age and was able to come out with a young group like ours.
We headed back to Alice after that and made a few pit stops, including a stop at Mt. Connor for photos as I requested and was back in Alice by 5:30. I had to switch rooms 6 times at Melanka's to find a room with a working heater and as luck would have it, I ended up in that room on my own.
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| The night we all got pretty drunk - Alice Springs, Australia |
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| The night we all got pretty drunk - Alice Springs, Australia |
We gathered at 8 for dinner and it was endless pizza, drinking, and dancing after that. It was the most I've ever drunk since I started my trip and I made it back fairly early at 2:00AM. I took a lot of action photos of people dancing and having good time - the photos reflected that night's atmosphere appropriately.
;)
;)
