Alice Springs is a cool little town. With decent hotels, dining, art and a fine hospital. From here there is 1,500 kilometers North to Darwin and a like distance South to Adelaide. Those roads are not interstates with towns and services. In some cases they may not be paved all the way. Carry the fuel you need and spares to repair flats and anything else that might break. For good measure carry a satellite phone as cell service quits at the edge of town. Our busses had satellite phones mounted by the driver.
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| That is the Gap between East and West McDonnell ranges |
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| The Todd River with puddles from recent rain
Yes it rained on us in Alice Springs and it was cool, mid 70’s. They promised us the river would flow if we had 4 or 5 days of heavy rain. The good news was we did not see it flow.
We drove to Uluru (Ayers Rock) In the rain. Sections of the road were flooded, but not to exceed our bus’s capability of 300 millimeters so we pressed on through 600 kilometers of ever changing nothing. Finally Mt Connell came into view, it is also known as false Uluru or “fooluru” according to John, our driver guide. It looks like the Rock but there is still 60 km to go.
We arrived at Sails in the Desert, our hotel, to find our evenings plans had been washed out, no dinner under the stars and the roads were impassable and the grounds a marsh. Instead we had a magnificent buffet dinner in the dining room.
5:45 wakeup to see Sunrise light the rock was not a wash out, but the clouds lingered and this is what we saw:
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Not the image we were looking for 🙁
After a day driving around the Rock and various interesting stops we drove to the “sunset viewing area” where our hotel had set up a table with snacks and champaign. We waited under clear skies for the sunset and here is one of don’t ask how many pictures I took on each camera. This is from the phone:
It is not enhanced or fiddled with, if anything it is not quite as brilliant as it appeared to the eye. OMG!
Oh, the hospital. Carol had a bad cough and her hip was bothering her, a lot. So we made it to a clinic which assured her the was nothing broken and that her cold seemed as if it would resolve itself. They arranged for an xray of the pelvic area to be sure there was nothing broken. We found our way to a modern hospital right next to the Royal Flying Doctors visitor center. Medicine in the outback is not taken lightly. It can be a thousand kilometers over bad or no road to get medical help. Without the Royal Flying Medical Doctors people in the outback would be in a bad way. The outcome for Carol was as expected. We have walked a lot today 🙂
Tomorrow we fly back to Sydney and Friday onward to Hawaii.