Is It the Weekend Already?

Since I was able to make it to about 8:30pm on my first night (I mean I had been up for almost 40 hours at this point - who wouldn't be tired?), I was able to sleep well and actually got up at a reasonable time. Yeah, jetlag, smetlag.

Saturday

Saturday morning Down Under. Well, if you have to have a day after a lot of traveling it's probably best to keep the schedule light. Was it breakfast in bed, or not? I can't remember, but there was something tasty and bacon too. Ahhhhhh. bacon. Well, you know it is. My dingo rocks!

The weeee dingo's arrived and we had a chance to climb the backyard bush. Yes, here we have lawns, there they have the bush. Well, a kangaroo had been spotted out there and there were plenty of roo poo everywhere. Isn't that a snake hole? What?!?! Not something you want to hear, but no serpents of death were spotted. No Kangaroos either. Just a great view from the top of the hill.

Truly the weather had followed me, being that it was Winter here and it was the same temperature as when I had left. Blue skies all around. Truly Alice Springs is a place that has more blue sky days than, well, anywhere I reckon.

After a truly lazy day, which is so what I needed, we had some Aussie fish and chips. You know, in Central Australia you truly can experience some of the freshest fish around. Yep, so make sure you bring your canoe when you come. Seriously, some good fish and on the chips you put 'sauce'. When you say 'ketchup' you can sometimes get an odd glance. Yes, you can buy Heinz ketchup at the store, but most of the stuff you will see is simply called 'sauce'.

Sunday

Another day in and feeling just fine. More than fine. We hit the outdoor market at the Todd Mall. Plenty of booths to buy food and your touristy and non-touristy wares. We wanted to keep it real, so we headed for the German sausages. Hmmmmmmm... the vendor didn't sound very German to me. Go figure. Oh my, that's a tasty sausage. And any vendor who drops the f-bomb during a sale is good in my books.

Probably one of the things that you notice about Alice more of when you are walking around is there are a lot of Aborigines here. I'm not saying that you shouldn't be seeing them here, it's that when you are in the larger cities you sort of forget about where you are at times. In Alice Springs you know you are close to the bush.

The people themselves are not viewed very highly. I sort of had this notion of this when I asked prior to coming. You won't get the blunt answer you want to hear, but more of a cushioned version. In a book I am reading by Bill Bryson In a Sunburned Country, there was a passage that summarizes it well enough:

At the school where I teach, the Aboriginal parents, well, get their welfare check and spend it on drink, and then go walkabout. And the teachers, well, feed the children-you know, out of their own pockets. Otherwise the children wouldn't eat....but they're lovely people really. When they're not drinking.

Now, on to my first outback site: Standley Chasm, which truly seems like a tropical setting as you move down the path towards the chasm. The rocky paths goes up and down, left and right, and requires some fancy footwork at times. When you finally reach the chasm, it's awe-inspiring. The way the light enters the space and lights up the rocks is amazing. We only had a bit of that, but it was enough to see an amazing spot of beauty in the middle of a desert.