Day 9, Friday, February 12 2010
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Because the tour was going to leave by 6:30 in the morning we had to get up quite early. There were a couple of others leaving with us as well, so there were a few other people up as well. We dumped our stuff outside, checked out and then had a small breakfast. Shortly after six-thirty the bus arrived and we got to know our tour guide. He was called Jason and was a quiet fella.
The start of the tour was a rather lengthy drive in the toyota bus to Kings Canyon. Kings Canyon is actually quite close to Alice Springs, but because the road straight there is only open for 4WD we had to go the long way around which took us many hours.
Once we got to Kings Canyon we took our water bottles, and did the laborious climb up to the top of Kings Canyon. The walk is up some rather steep steps and in the blazing heat it was quite a work out, but I was just loving it, finally giving my legs something to do, after so many hours of sitting in cars, planes and busses…
At the top we were greeted by a beautiful view over Kings Canyon and on over to Uluru and the rest of the desert. It was really stunning. We then walked on around the rim of the canyon while our guide stopped every now and then to tell us the one or other thing about a plant, or about the aborigines and so on. It was really wonderful.
Halfway through the canyon we saw that there were quite some heavy clouds coming in. I thought this is the desert, they will probably just clear up. The guide didn’t say too much, but after walking on for another half and hour he said the rain will probably come and so we should decide what to do. There was another Rock Tour bus out there and we then met with their group. Our swags (rolled up mattress and sleeping bag mix) were on top of the trailer of the busses, so to make sure they wouldn’t get wet our tour guide decided to run back, while we would carry on to the water hole, which was about a quarter of an hour away. We were given the decision either walk back, or go for the risk and the resulting adventure. It was nearly unanimously clear that we went for the adventure, so we walked on to the water hole.
Just as we got to the water hole the first drops came down, but that didn’t stop us from taking off our clothes and jumping into the water. It was a nice water hole, which was surrounded on three sides by steep cliff faces and on the last side a little creek mounded into the hole and fed it with water. Along the creek there were many plants which were nice protected by the canyon. It was really a stunning place to be.
The rain didn’t come down to hard, but we still decided to go back the way we came, as if we would continue on around the canyon and it did come down hard, then we would be needing ropes to get through the quickly flooded creeks. And as we didn’t have ropes with us, the situation was clear.
Back at the bus we got back in and then drove to a cattle station, while picking up a lot of wood for our camp fire, on the way. The drive was very adventurous as we had to drive through a couple of rain falls and many of the roads were really badly flooded, but thankfully never to high for the bus, although Jason did have to walk the one or rather to test the depth of the water.
At the camp site which is on a cattle station nearly the size of holland, we had a camp fire and cooked chilli con carne also vegetarian style and slept under the stars. It was so amazing to see the Milky Way just about our heads and being to fall asleep under it. Thankfully the camp site was dry and we could enjoy the outdoors with out rain on our heads.