Venture to Australia

Trip to the Red Centre - Day 1

We left for the Red Centre around 4am this morning Elena, Liandra, Angela and I. And after a short stopover in Adelaide we arrived in Alice Springs around 11:30am (11:00am Brisbane time - there's a 30 minute time change).

The flies are crazy here, they're everywhere and they like to fly at your face constantly especially if you're sweating; thankfully they're merely annoying and don't bite. Upon arrival at the airport we took a taxi into Alice Springs and checked into the YHA Youth Hostel where we'd stay for the night.


Because there were 4 of us we were able to get a family room so we didn't have to share the room with people we didn't know. The place came complete with a pool, and a fully functional kitchen complete with pots and pans. They even had community shelves where people would leave things like bags of sugar, cooking oil and salt for others to use since it would be too heavy to bring on the trip. There was also an Internet Cafe where you could surf at a rate of $2.00/15 mins.


It's a fairly small city Alice Springs, with a population of about 28,000, however, there are lots of shops and grocery stores to help accomodate all the tourists that come through every year.

We used the rest of the day to get groceries, browse the shops and go to a few of the museums that were around town. Elena and I went to the Australian Women's museum that is a tribute to a multitude of Australian women who were teachers, doctors, homemakers and scientists who had achieved great things in "the bush". They had all sorts of things in the museum including a butter churn, iron and even a piano; all of which were donations to the museum.

Elena and I also went to a few of the shops. Because Alice Springs is host to many tourists from many different countries a lot of the brochures they have are translated into several different langauges including Spanish (Elena's home tounge).


At around 5:00pm Elena and I picked up the car, we were originally supposed to get a Toyota Corolla (yay :p) but were lucky enough to be upgraded to a Nissan X-Trail 4WD.

A little later in the day we climbed Anzac hill to see the sunset, we also found a war monument that was up there. Anzac hill offered a great view of the city and overlooked the McDonnells, a range of mountains that line the edge of the city.


Tomorrow we will drive 500km to Uluru (Ayers Rock) just in time for the sunset.

posted by Compmouse @ 9/23/2005 11:50:00 AM