The Center

March 30

The Center
So we have spent the last couple of days in what everyone calles the "Center" of Australia. We drove down from Kathrine all the way to Alice springs (taking 1.5 days), then drove anouther several hours West of Alice Springs where Chris wanted to take the back road to Kings Canyon. I said "Whatever" as I am just along for this part of the drive, as I refused to drive until we return to Tennant Creek (as part of his argument he made against flying down here was that he wanted to "Drive the area around Uluru"), so instead of driving across huge empty spans of nothing I get to take this oportunity to read, write, and watch all the wonderfull movies that have been given to me by the people along the way. Anyway I made a comment that this gravel road was probably going to be nothing but solid washboard and rougher than hell. Chris said it wouldn't and that I was being cynical (which I was as I was thinking I would be having a lot more fun on the east coast), however I turned out to be right as we hit this gravel road at 80k an hour and he turned to look at me to say "See it is smooth as silk" which was stupid as it was starting to get dark, and if he had kept his eyes on the road he would have noticed that there were huge ruts, pot holes, and washboard. 1 minute later Chris was down to 40 and I was looking for my missing teeth that had been shaken out of my lower jar. In the end that section of road took us around 3.5 hours to drive, in the dark. As you can imagine I was less than pleased, however I wasn't driving so it was easier to handle. I just stuck my head out the window and felt the wind on my face. We camped at Kings Canyon and the next morning we went to look at it. They claim it has the best views in Australia, and I will gladley admit whoever wrote that must not have traveled around Australia a whole lot as it was completely underwelming. The canyon at Exmouth was more awe inspiring than Kings Canyon, and it isn't even on the tourist map. We then drove to Uluru (Areys Rock), where I discovered that whey wanted 25 bucks a head to enter the park. I was less than impressed by the price tag, but I bought a ticket anyway. Once I bought the ticket I had a read, in which they request that you respect the aboriginal request not to climb the rock. So in the end I paid 25 bucks to walk around the base of Uluru, something that impressed me about as much as an empty beer can in the ditch. Chris took about 100 pictures, I took 1. It was a lot like Wave rock in WA, but with less personality, and 25 bucks more expensive. Uluru just didn't have a story, or if it did I couldn't find it, and in the end we respected the aboriginal request and didn't climb it. Once again I was right before I came down here, Uluru was just boring and overblown. We saw the sun set on Uluru, which was also really dissapointing, as when I looked at the clouds they looked more impressive on the sunset than the rock. That night we camped at the Caravan park and the next day went and saw Kata-Tjuta, a mountain similair to Uluru about 25km away from The Rock. Here is the first time I rose from my auto pilot and my eyes found something that actually had character. It was a bunch of little mountains with these green vallleys. This was way cooler than Uluru and Kings combined. Was it worth the 2200km trip out of the way to go and see, well no, really the center was disapointing. The funnest time I had was when me, Niko, and Mark made a congo line them playing bad music on the guitars and me practicing the Digeredoo. In reality, if we didn't have these 2 guys with us giving life back to the car, I think I would have left Chris at his rock and made a bee-line to Cairns where I hope to have a better time. I really wish I had these days on the East coast.

Days left in Australia 27