on the road again, just can't wait to get on the road again!

well another holiday has been and gone...the best one in my opinion, it's definitely on the list of the best weeks of my life. and that isn't an understatement...so here goes

to a town like alice

a bit about the other convicts, i mean travellers, so you know who i'm talking about:

rochelle: a crazy hairless canadian
ina: german, the giggliest person ever
claire: a fellow essex girl, very friendly
steve: claire's romford boyf, shy but great once you get him going
olivier: my french/columbian boy, a great dancer
janneka: dutch, my fav dance partner...mad times
erin: american, the other dirty mind on the trip (not quite as bad as me though!)
tom: a singing, guitar playing, pommy photographer
michael: german, we had a mad conversation about the difference between rocks and skirts!
kurt: austrian, nicknamed arnie...
manda: a human fly from america
richard: scot, very dry sense of humour with a voice like billy conelly
raymond: possible the most dutch dutchman i've ever met
marion: german, an animal on the grog
katja: a very quiet dutch girl, but good fun when she got the hang of it
miha (aka mike): an incredible person, crazy as hell and amazingly lively
scott: the fab tour guide and bus driver, aussie, top bloke
clint: arrogant aussie @#$*%&!

so the trip...

as the holidays swing round once again, off i go to the great outback of australia. it was me against the world this time as i set off to adelaide on me jonesome. as a seasoned traveller, and a fairly lucky person at that, i had no problem turning up to this as yet unexplored city and hoping it would all go well. so when i rocked up, knowing only the name of the hostel i was staying in, i managed to find a bus that went pretty much straight there! phew, thinks i. i eventually made it to the hostel unharmed, despite the fact that someone thought i was called sarah! adelaide is a really nice city, i am in fact going to go back and visit a couple of friends i made on holiday who go to uni there. anyhoo, off i trundle to find some supper. i wandered for hours and hours, nah, i found the restaurant strip and decided pretty quickly not to go to macca's. had some lovely pasta at an italian and then made my weary way back to the hostel. however i was ambushed on the way and did a personality test. well i know what you're thinking, she was obviously told what a fantastic person she is...again! well, of course that did cross my mind too! it was interesting actually, some of what he said i could have told you myself, some of it was bull, but some of it was fairly interesting actually. i'm not as active as i should be, which i knew anyway, but i'm good at communicating with others. so after that, i headed home, wary of anyone else carrying a clipboard. i sat on the balcony of the hostel writing in my diary and checking out a particularly hot guy at the next table. (sorry folks who didn't want to know that!)

DAY 1
i hopped out of bed and was ready to meet the bus at some ungodly hour in the morning, actually it was only about 6:45am, not so bad really. we picked everyone up and soon were on our way. it was pretty terrifying. it's amazing how that sort of thing seems like such a good idea at the time, then when you get to doing whatever it is, you suddenly realise what you've put yourself up for. the first day was quite a shock. everyone getting to know each other and still a little wary of who everyone was. we went up from adelaide through the flinders ranges and made our first stop in clare for a toilet break. then we stopped at the yourambulla caves (see linky thing) and looked at aboriginal art. that night we were eased into the nights with a night at angorichina, an old station where injured soldiers went to recover from typhoid after the second world war. not any more, unfortunately! we were wined and dined with beer and kangaroo...mmm, one of the best nights of food ever i reckon. this was the night people first started to get to know each other and definite groups started forming.

DAY 2
we drove along the oodnadatta track, parallel to the gahn railway, which used to be the only way across the outback. a stop at lake eyre south (not water whatsoever, just salty mud...but apparently when it floods the water can be up to 4m high!) after lots more driving we arrived at our second stopover, william's creek. this was the first night of swagging it, for those of you not clued up on the old aussie camping arrangements, a swag is a sort of big...oh read the link, it'll explain! william's creek is populated by an average of 10-12 people, so you'd have thought the pub wouldn't get much business, but there's so little in the outback that people have to stop somewhere to wet their throats with a little of the golden liquid. the pub was in fact full! mostly of us and another tour group, but there were some locals too. this pub is on of those places that's completely random and oddball. apparently the trend to staple things to the walls began when someone stuck up their business card and others followed suit. it's now completely covered in business cards, id cards, underwear (i think most of it was clean!), and all oddments of stuff attached to the walls, ceiling and anywhere that doesn't move! that night i met a lovely guy called damien. the first number scored that trip, and actually, the only one, if you're going to be pinikity! he offered to fly me to the next stop, but i couldn't abandon my new found friends...we were so similar, it was unreal, loads of those moments when one of us would say something and the other would say, "i know exactly what you mean!" the one problem with that place was the flies, the dratted flies...all over everyone and everything!

DAY 3
a drive through the outback to coober pedy. real life bedrock, i kid you not! the bus felt far too advanced for the town. i felt like i should be running along under the bus fred flinstone style. it's the opal capital of...well it's pretty damn good actually. because it's so hot out there people live inside the hills! no joke, they dig out their houses and can add rooms if they feel they want to, in fact lots of people find opals when extending their houses! one woman i spoke to had found an opal seam worth about $10 000 in her larder! on the way to this mad town we stopped at the dingo fence. it's something like...well, it's pretty damn long! we also stopped at a random hippie place filled with planes with their noses in the ground and shag wagons cut in half...strange stuff. it was manda’s 20th that day and we went out to the pizza place for dinner, then to the underground pub. just before we were about to set off for dinner mike rocked up with a handful of opals, mad individual…erin and i discovered our dirty minds, and we made many many insinuating comments. we had a tour of the opal museum and saw how they prepare the opals and went down into an old mine. surprisingly no one offered to buy me an opal…can’t think why, but one of the guys did offer me 60 cents! we stayed in the ‘bonkhouse’, originally bunk of course…it’s strange to sleep underground, cool but strange.

DAY 4
one heck of a long drive…and i mean all day long. i sat in the back of the bus with kurt, manda and marion. i came out a different shade of brown at the end of the day and i think i inhaled a fair bit of the dust too! arrived at yulara (ayres rock resort) and watched sunset over the rock. The group had a great time, we giggled and giggled all over the place and over a few a beers too! collapsed into our swags after sitting round the fire listening to tom singing and playing michael’s mini guitar.

DAY 5
sunrise (wake up at 5am!) over kata tjuta (the olgas – it actually means many heads in the local aboriginal language) then a walk around the valley of the winds, and yes it was indeed windy. walked around with michael and had a ridiculous conversation about rocks and skirts and the strangeness of the german language. rochelle discovered and rediscovered how annoying clint is. and i couldn’t my friggin camera coz i’d rolled it up in my friggin swag! so no exciting piccies for me! more sitting around the campfire and chatting and giggling. i also have to admit to going to the pub with clint, despite his despised status in the group, I just needed pub beer. swags again tonight, it was incredible being able to sleep under the stars, to go to sleep watching the constellations and then wake up and think it’s only 5 mins later! it screwed with our heads the first time.

DAY 6
sunrise over uluru, couldn’t find my camera…again, this time it was in my bag! (grrrr) walked around the rock, no i didn’t climb it they ask you not to, in fact a good quote from the bossy bot of paper, or was it the lonely planet (?), anyway, ‘how would you feel if people climbed all over your cathedrals?’ had some great chats on the way round and learnt about aboriginals and some of their culture. finally a bit of grass to sleep on! dust, and damn red dust at that gets everywhere! washed all the grit out of my hair. giggled a lot! ina gave me a fantastic head massage and i did a pretty good impression of sideshow bob with my hair in an interesting ‘do’, don’t worry i have photographic evidence…

DAY 7
the final day…the last time we had to get up at 5, thank goodness, it’s hard work getting up when it’s still as pitch black as night! so sunrise over kings canyon (watarrka) this morning, some fantastic shots, because, yes, this time i remembered my camera! woo hoo for me! today’s walk was actually quite tiring, lots of up and down and the heat was immense. the flies were the worst though, never have i experienced flies like that, i ended up taking 3 photos of the same thing because i thought a fly had got in the way the first 2 times, but they’re great snaps. it was the most incredible views of the area, you could see for miles and miles of outback and nothingness. after the walk, up heart attack hill and around the canyon, hot and sweaty, we set off to alice springs. relief all round as we fought each other to get to the showers and into the pool. it was fantastic – grass, showers and shade! went for dinner at the backpackers and started the drinking. ah and the beds! as much as i love swags it’s nice not too sleep surrounded by dirt. celebrated janneka’s birthday and did a beer bong…i’ve never burped so loudly in my life, in fact i was applauded for it. if it had been spirits, or smooth beer i’d have done so much better…too much gas involved.

the trip was mad, we had so much fun and the next day in alice was brilliant. we went out as usual and pissed about on the dance floor. i loved every minute of it. there are loads of little anecdotes that aren’t worth writing because they loose something in translation, but i’m sure i’ll be quoting things for ages. it’s fantastic that i can make friends so quickly and easily and that a lot of them will stay as close friends for ages. the only other thing i really have to mention is that olivier is very very sweet…

there you go, the only holiday i’ve written about and it was a bloody good one too.