travel

Recharing the batteries

Alice Springs
Monday, July 9, 2007

Our first free day!!
Although we could have slept in till late in the morning, we were both out of bed early due to the revoltingly horrible saggy mattresses. Still suffering insomnia, whatever position I tried, I always ended up in the hole in the middle of the bed. I asked at reception whether they could give us better mattresses but they were very rude and disinterested - they offered to give us a motel room - for an extra $40 each !!!
I had little chance of finding another hotel with rooms available and no chance of getting a refund from Melankas - so we were stuck.
 
First order of priority was breakfast and coffee so we headed into to the mall. The Sunday markets were on so after a quick caffeine fix, we strolled up and down the stalls looking at the handicraft. Nothing very exciting - lots of aboriginal paintings but it's hard to tell what is authentic. After building up an appetite we found another cafe for more coffee and French toast with maple syrup (what diet?).
 
We would have liked to hire a scooter to explore the town for the day but there is no scooter hire in Alice Springs - none at all!! Reduced to using our legs, we wandered around some more shops, spent an hour in an internet cafe doing emails, went across town to visit the Royal Flying Doctor Museum then back into town for lunch at 3pm. It was actually very difficult to find a place that would feed us at 3pm and after several false starts, we ended up back at the same cafe we had started the day at, eating a fabulous spaghetti carbornara. Stuffed full to the gills we returned to the backpackers to read and pack. We didn't bother going out again for dinner as the temperature had dropped from a pleasant 24 degrees to a frigid 5 degrees. We packed, ready for another 5am start.

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Wicked - oh so wicked!
Wicked Campers are everywhere. Whoever dreamed up this business idea is a genius because you can't go 50kms without spotting one. See the photos for a sample of our collection.

Numberplates:
It must be cheap in NT to get personalised numberplates. Most of these photos were taken in one carpark!
 

01 Todd River dry
Todd River dry
02 Looking after the land
Looking after the land
03 An interesting way to travel
An interesting way to travel
04 A more interesting way to travel
A more interesting way to travel
This is a German tour bus. Each of the windows in the back section represents a "sleeping pod". There are doors on the other side where you slide into your pod at night - eliminating the need for tents etc. It would feel too much like a coffin for my liking.
Wicked 01
Wicked 02
Wicked 03
Wicked 04
Wicked 05
Wicked 06
Wicked 07
Wicked 08
Wicked 09
Wicked 10
Wicked 11
Wicked 12
Wicked 13
Wicked 14
Wicked 15
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z3
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z6
z7
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