Back in Sydney

After the Red Centre we got back to Sydney. After two days it was time for Inka to go home. It didn't actually feel that weird without her, as I don't mind being on my own. I do feel much more comfortable now than I did when we first arrived, so it was definitely a comfort to not be alone in the beginning.

I decided to stay in Sydney for a week longer to be able to hang out with my friend Amira (can't remember if I've mentioned her earlier, but we met in Hong Kong when we were both doing an exchange semester there). Another reason was that I got a dirt-cheap weekly rate for a hostel.

I have spent a lot of time with Amira. She's in the beginning of an exam period (she's doing a Master's degree in Macquarie Uni) and thus supposed to study, which naturally means that she hangs out with me all the time. I plead partially guilty for this: it's just so easy to pop in the library (where's she pretends to study) in the afternoon after sightseeing and continue together from there. I was afraid hanging out with her would lead to drinking every evening (we have a background with partying). But, actually, we only went out twice, and otherwise have been having dinners in at her place. It has also been nice to meet her Aussie friends. Not that other backpackers aren't friendly, but the golden questions of backpackers smalltalk (whereareyoufrom, howlonghaveyoubeeninOz, wherehaveyoubeensofar, whereareyougoingnext) start to lose their charm after a few too many uses. It's charming how friendly and open Australians are. You have a discussion for 15 minutes and only aafter do they ask "whose friend are you by the way" (= what are you doing in this party where we know everybody else).

Amira managed to convince me (pretty easily) that going out of town to visit Ikea for meatballs was a good idea. It was actually, as it was lovely to have some Scandinavian/Finnish food again. Of course Amira also ended up buying loads of stuff, including a shelf and a desk (which had a Finnish name - I must be a little homesick when a tiny detail like that makes me happy). I substituted for her boyfriend (who lives in Hong Kong) and helped her to carry them home, where I was rewarded with chocolate. What wouldn't I do for chocolate, haha.

I found a cheap deal and finally made a day-trip to the Blue Mountains. Not having any proper mountains in Finland (well, only some low hills in Lapland, the highest point being only just over 1300 meters), I always get ridiculously excited when visiting them. Blue Mountains aren't that high (only about 1000 m), but at least they are secluded enough to provide some lovely, crisp fresh air.

On the tour we visited several lookouts and did some short hikes. My favourite one was the walk we did down the valley in the midst of a temperate rainforest. Pretty!

The blue hue comes from eucalyptus oil hanging in the air above the trees.

Scratching the stones turns them into multicoloured dust - this is what local Aborigines have used for body paintings.

On our way back we visited the site of Sydney 2000 (hope I got the year right) Olympics, accompanied with the guide's accounts about his volunteering there. To be honest, I have to admit that when I have very limited interest for spectator sports, I couldn't care less for buildings where they take place.

The next day after the tour I realized that I'd forgotten my shoes in the tour van. I called the company and luckily managed to reach the guy who was driving that car that day. He kindly agreed to drop my shoes off in a central hostel. Only when I went to pick them up in the evening, I found out that I had also left my coat behind. Oops! I think the part of my brain that's responsible for taking care of my belongings has been damages somehow, because I seem to keep losing stuff all the time.

I've gotten to know Sydney pretty well now. I know how to get around with the public transport, know the city centre very well, and can locate many of the suburbs on the map (having visited Amira in two, stayed in three, and hiked in many). The most I like the public parks, especially Hyde Park and Botanical Gardens. Also Sydney markets are really cute - I'm going to have to visit some more of them once I'll be back in the end of July. I go crazy in them, at least in Sydney. There are so many nice things I'd like to buy but can't (because I don't want to carry them around the whole continent, and need to save the money for other things). I especially loved the one in Glebe. Sitting on the grass after having browsed the stalls, munching sour raspberry licourice (metrilakua!) and listening to live music felt like being on a festival.
I also like the size of the city, because there's enough room for peculiar neighbourhoods, and for surprises around the corner. Not having anything to do I've been strolling around the city quite a bit, encountering lots of interesting things, like Chinese market streets with mouthwatering scents in the air, or groups of teenagers practising their breakdancing moves behind a concert hall.

I'd like to share a tip to my fellow budget-concious travellers: one of my new loves is a pub called Gaff. There you buy a glass of house wine for 5 dollars (3,5 euros), and get a free steak with chips and salad buffet for free! That's what I call a deal. If Amira wasn't such a good cook, I probably would've dragged her there every evening.

All in all, I had a very pleasant, yet lazy and slow-paced, time in Sydney. However, when I boarded a night bus to Byron Bay on Monday evening, I was happy to leave and head for something new.

Patrolling the desert

We managed to catch a taxi to Adelaide airport early in the morning and even made it to our flight to Alice Springs in Central Australia without any problems. (After missing our former flight, I'll never take catching flights for granted anymore.) We got a free transfer shuttle to our very cute hostel called Annie's Place (no, I didn't choose it only because of the name), a quirky place with a pool, old movie posters on the walls and a pub with comfy vintage furniture, the same style my grandparents have in their home. We became particularly fond of the pool, as for the first time we were motivated enough to actually dip in. Swimming felt so nice after the long winter in Europe!

On our arrival day we didn't really have anything to do, so we went for a walk around the town, planning to visit the first McDonalds for a nice 70 cent chocolate ice cream (I would be completely addicted to them now, but luckily for my shape they don't have them in most McD's, boohoo). Alice Springs as a town didn't really impress us, as there's nothing to do. Granted, there are some pricey museums trying to squeeze out the last dollars from tourists, but we weren't really interested in those. The heat was so scorching (at least for a fair Northern European like myself) that walking about wasn't that pleasant. We were getting desperate to find the yellow archs and actually stopped people to ask for directions, but they were also tourists and didn't know where it was. After walking around the whole town centre we gave up and bought some unsatisfying ice creams from a supermarket. On our way back we found on the street an empty french fries pouch with the yellow M, proving that there certainly is at least one in town, and mocking us for our lack of success.

Being short on time, we couldn't do a three-day tour taking in all the highlights of the area, so we settled for a one-day tour. It was a 19-hour-long tour visiting Uluru the rock and Kaja Tjuta national park with some more rocks. 1000 km return drive doesn't sound like much fun, but actually I enjoyed sitting in the bus very much. On the way there I was staring transfixed at the desert around me. It wasn't the barren, red plain I had in my imagination. The soil was a stunning shade of red, yes. However, thanks to the area having received double the amount of usual yearly rainfall already in January and February, the desert didn't look like it usually does. Instead, the land was full of vegetation, lush baby-green grass and bushes. So beautiful! The ride back was even better. There were multiple thunderstorm blazing in the desert for hours at the time, flashes of lightning slashing the sky. Gorgeous! I tell you something, thunderstorm in a desert are something.

We were also trying to spot some wildlife on the way, but the only saw some cows lounging in the shade under bushes. There are 1,2 million camels in the area, where were they now? (Yes, they are an imported species that took a liking to the country and started reproducing like rabbits.) Instead we just saw emptiness, ranches the size of European countries. I suppose if you don't like people, this would be a good place for avoiding seeing them.

Having heard so much of the Rock, I tried to be careful with my expectations. I mean, how cool can a rock be? When I got to see it then, I have to say all my expectations, build by hundreds of professional pictures of the rock, were met. I was impressed by the colour, the shape, the texture, the sheer size of it. It is just the rock, but in my opinion it's worth driving a thousand kilometers to see it.

The rock is actually red because of the rust on the upper layers of it, the rock itself is grey.

The last two pictures are from Kaja Tjuta, another group of rocks.

We had a very nice barbeque at the sunset viewing area, growing even more appreciative of the view with some champagne. We didn't get to witness the rock glowing red in the last strays of sun, as unfortunately the sun sank into a sea of clouds before reaching the edge of the horizont. However, we got to see a sunset that was one of the most dramatic I've seen in my life.

Special picture dedicated to the other Anni's back home, also known as losers in Finland.

We saw beauty that literally took my breath away, leaving me gasping. Still, there are two other things that I might remember even longer:

1. The desert flies. They had a passionate, burning, unyielding lust for my bodily liquids. They tried relentlessly to enter every exposed hole in my body. They were everywhere. To prevent the flies from entering our tour bus, the drivers were happy to "whip everybody with their fairy sticks" (that name sounds so wrong). If you go to a desert for longer than a day, I strongly recommend that you wear a hat with a mosquito net, that is, unless you enjoy insects up your nose, inside your ears, and stuck to your eyeballs. Oh well, at least battling them off was good exercise for my arms.

2. On our way back to Alice we stopped at a roadhouse for a toilet. Never in my life have I seen so many cockroaches, not even on TV. They were wriggling everywhere on the floor, swimming in the sink, possibly hanging from the roof waiting for a chance to jump on my head. Be happy that I didn't take my camera with me, otherwise I would share a picture. That sight won't leave me very soon.

Adelaide & Kangaroo Island

We arrived in Adelaide late in the evening straight after our Great Ocean Road tour. We had booked in the Backpack Oz hostel, just because we knew they had free BBQ dinner on Wednesdays. Who's a sucker for free food?

On Thursday we discovered there's not much to do in central Adelaide. We took a stroll around the Botanical Gardens, and visited the National Wine Centre which had a visually very nice but content-wise pretty generic exhibition about Australian wines. We didn't really feel like doing museums, even though they were all in the same block and free. Instead, most of the time we spent outside the hostel was in the public library, enjoying the joys of 2-hours-a-day free internet. Second most popular way to pass time was grocery shopping. Whoa...

Friday was departure time for our tour to visit Kangaroo Island, the second biggest island in Oz. I have mixed feelings about this tour: it was pretty pricey for just two days (loads of fun but not really worth that money), included too much driving around, and also doing the bumby ferry rides was not really my cup of tea. The group of 21 was a bit too large to achieve an intimate atmosphere. However, we did a lot of enjoyable things on the island. We went to see a couple of pretty beaches and climbed up a hill for a nice view. We saw penguins, seals, and more kangaroos and koalas. The highlight of the trip was definitely visiting a group of sea lions on the Seal Bay beach. They were sooo cute that we turned all squeeling and girly.

I also liked staying on a farm, where we slept in a shed (which smelled slightly of cows - I didn't mind though, just reminded me of my grandparents' farm) and woke up to a pile of warm pancakes for a breakfast.

On Sunday we again did nothing, as we just wanted to rest and were to wake up early on Monday to head to our next destination, Alice Springs.

Well, things don't always go as planned, as we definitely had not aimed at participating in our private Amazing Race on Monday. We left the hostel well in time, only to find that our shuttle bus to the airport was late. After 15 min I called the booking centre and they told me the bus would be there very soon. In the end, the car came 30 minutes late. We sat on the bus and were starting to feel pretty stressed out, when the driver kept stopping everywhere and was driving slower than my grandma would (who doesn't have a drivers license). On arrival to the airport, the was 35 minutes left before the departure of our flight. I grabbed our tickets and ran inside the terminal to do self check-in, while Inka collected our backpacks and pretended to be a carrying mule. The check-in machine gave me an error message and told me to go to the service desk, where I was directed to the check-in counters. I proceed to the baggage drop desk, as there's a huge queue in front of the normal desks. I hand in our tickets and the flight attendant accepts them, even though we get some bad eye for showing up at the closing time of check-in. We are so relieved. That is, until a slight problem turns up: our tickets were for the flight on Sunday.

...

F***!

The attendant check if we could still buy seats for this flight, but first, the flight is full, and second, it's too late anyway since the check-in is already closed. Our tickets are not valid anymore and there won't be any refund. We visit the sales desk, but neither Qantas nor Jetstar have seats left for that day, and also the following day there are seat available only in the business class, which obviously is out of our league budget-wise. Tiger is also full for the next two days. We consult the lady at a downstairs tourist information, but she informs us that the bus tickets would cost 500 dollars each (Easter), and also the train doesn't leave before Wednesday. There is a 2-day shuttle tour, but they also only do Wednesday and Saturday departures. Looks like there's no way for us to get to Alice Springs in time to go on our Wednesday-Friday tour of Uluru, Kaja Tjuta and Kings Canyon.

We take a bus back to the city centre and take asylum in the library, determined to come up with a plan, what to do next. I find reasonably-priced flights for Thursday morning and book them. I cancel our accomodation and the tour in Alice Springs, and let them know we didn't make it on the flight, but we'll get there on Thursday. We book a new, expensive 1-day tour for Friday.

We look for a hostel to stay in Adelaide. It being Easter, there's nothing, nichts, nada available for the same day, at least in our price range. We find a cheap hostel in a nearby beach town Glenelg, 30 min tram ride from Adelaide, and take it. We take our bags, decide to forget it all, and spend three lazy days on the beach doing nothing, except for reading novels and catching up on celebrity gossip in the local library's magazine room.

We can only laugh at ourselves and at what happened. All along we thought the flight was on Monday, we both had that date in our calendars and in all our plans, and apparently didn't bother to double-check the date on the ticket. (We did check all our other tickets after this happened, surprise!)

I've always wondered who would be stupid, unorganized, messy enough to miss their flight. Now I know.