2019 Australia Trip

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Traveler 2019 Australia Trip
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- Jun 4, 2019
- 🌬 14 °C
- Altitude: 1,699 ft
- Australia South Australia Anangu Pitjantjatjara -25.326988, 130.9976825°19’37” S 130°59’52” E
Day 11
2019 Australia Trip - Day 10
June 4, 2019 in Australia ⋅ 🌬 14 °C
Well, sleeping outside on the dirt ground with just the Swag in Outback winter is not my thing. It’s so, so cold!! At first I was using my winter jacket as a pillow, but after being waken up by the cold wind too many times, never able to be warm enough to fall in sleep, I figured I could wear it instead Have you ever try to put on a winter jacket inside a sleeping bag? Not easy! I then put on my socks too. Felt some warmth after that. Finally fell in sleep. I dreamt I was Jackie Chan’s manager, had to take him to hospital after he got hurt doing stunts. Is it wired!? I guess I was really stressed.

Woke up too many times throughout the night, hearing the snoring. Steve was snoring up a big thunder in my right, Evan was snoring up a small thunder in my left, I was raining tears in the middle. I was so jealous of them that could sleep to soundly!!

Finally time to get up at 5:30 AM. We then headed back to Ayers Rock to see the sunrise and have breakfast. It’s truly a majestic sight! As the sun slowly risen, the sunshine slowly turned the rock into bright red. Amazing!

Next, we climbed a mountain called Kata Tjuta. Steve and Evan chose to do a more challenging climb that’s 4 km longer distance than the rest of us, and I stayed with the rest of the group, worried abut my heart problem, and didn’t want to slow them down. They hiked the whole 4 km of rocky road in one hour!

The best thing about this hike, besides the fact we were surrounded by red mountains and blue sky, is the fact there was no flies in the morning. Steve had a much time because of that.

But the flies returned after noon. Fortunately we were just driving to King’s Canyon which is about 2 and half hours away. And on the way there, we stopped at a small town, bought our own flynet (a net cover your whole face to keep the flies away)! YAY! Never thought we would be this happy to buy some nets!

Did you know billions of years ago, Australia has a huge inland sea? There are still many salt water lakes remaining in the Outback area. It’s kind of cool to see a large body of water in the middle of the desert!

We gathered firewood for tonight’s camp fire. As soon as we arrived at Kong’s Canyon camp site, we started a big fire.

Upon learning about Evan’s 14th birthday is just 2 days away, Rita and couple other ladies gathered some local fruits, baked an amazing birthday cake with the camp fire! The entire camp group gathered around the fire and sung happy birthday to Evan, who was completely surprised by all this. Pretty amazing birthday celebration!!

Another night under the stars deep in the mountain! This time I am prepared! I am wearing a shirt, a sweater, a vast and a winter jacket before I get into the swag. Should have a warmer night with all this preparation.Read more
Traveler Happy birthday Evan!
6/8/19Reply
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Traveler 2019 Australia Trip
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- Jun 5, 2019
- ☀️ 13 °C
- Altitude: 1,982 ft
- Australia Northern Territory MacDonnell -24.400517, 131.76058824°24’2” S 131°45’38” E
Day 12
2019 Australia Trip - Day 11
June 5, 2019 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 13 °C
After a much warmer sleep last night while wearing 4 layers of warm clothes, I woke up super early, under a sky full of stars! We left the camp site by 6 AM, heading into King’s Canyon.

Today, we hike the rims of the canyon. The entire hike takes about 3 hours.

It started with a very difficult climb up a steep hill called “heart attack hill”. Evan, with his young legs and excellent health , climbed way ahead of us. The rest of us huffed and puffed our way up. We were greeted with a magnificent view of the canyon and land far beyond. Blue sky, red land and greens extended all the way to the horizon.

We then continued on for hours, admiring the beautiful rock formations all around us, and hiked to a calm waterhole that’s surrounded by large vegetation called Garden of Eden. I have to say my daily workouts paid off here since I was able to keep up with Evan, climbing up and down on many, many rocky hills. Winter wind chilled our faces, and bright sunshine warmed our backs. We hiked fast and efficient, with no one else but our camping group behind us.

Next leg of the trip is far more boring, we basically needed to drive 5 and 1/2 hours to Alice Springs. The vast Outback landscape stretched in front of us, on and on. However, we did stop for a bathroom break. Rita told us every tree is a loving tree, feel free to relief yourself around it. LOL! I think this is the first time I heard a tour guide encouraging us to relieve ourselves outdoors!

We stopped at a small town on the way to have lunch. There is an Emu enclosure here. While trying to feed them, Evan’s finger was bitten! Fortunately nothing serious.

After a long drive, we finally arrived at Alice Springs!! We will sleep in an actual bed tonight! Woohoo!

There is some mishaps about the hostel the tour group booked for us. So we decided just book a much nicer hotel - Doubletree hotel here for tonight instead of sharing room with strangers. Private bathroom too! What a treat after roughing it for the past 3 days!Read more
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Traveler 2019 Australia Trip
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- Jun 6, 2019
- 🌬 12 °C
- Altitude: 1,660 ft
- Australia Northern Territory Yulara -25.243629, 130.98490925°14’37” S 130°59’6” E
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Day 13
2019 Australia Trip - Day 12
June 6, 2019 in Australia ⋅ 🌬 12 °C
Today is Evan’s 14th birthday!! We were picked up from our hotel really early in the morning, started 6 and 1/2 hours tour bus ride back to Ayers Rock. The tour guide Jordan happens to be Rita’s boyfriend, and had learned about Evan’s birthday from Rita. So he suggested everyone on the bus to sing happy birthday song to Evan in everyone’s native language. There were people from at least 5 countries represented on the bus, so the song was sung in French, Chinese, English, Dutch, Swiss German. How awesome is that!!

We arrived at our hotel before noon. The big celebration of Evan’s day has just begun.

After a nice lunch at the town square, we joined the camel tour.

When we arrived at the camel farm, we saw a line of camels arranged in a perfect line, sitting quietly and patiently for us. Evan and I rode a camel called Hugo, Steve’s camel is called Buddy (nick name is psycho! He is the only camel that has to wear a mouth guard). It was a bit startling when the camel first stood up, because it’s so tall. But we soon got very comfortable riding it because it walked so calmly and slowly. Our tour guide walked alongside of us, taught us a lot of fun facts alit camels. Do you know Australia has the biggest wild camel population in the world? Australia camels also maintained some good qualities through the years, that the Arab camels had lost, so the Arab countries actually import camels from Australia sometimes.

The most exciting events are coming up!!

Tonight, there were 4 events planned with Ayers Rock Resort - Night of Field of lights program:

1) We had drinks (Steve had several glasses of champagne; Evan and I had soft drinks) and hors d’oeuvres with sunset over Uluru rock

2) We had 3 course meal with fantastic Australian food. Our table mate told the event organizer about Evan’s birthday, so everyone there (about 80 people) sung happy birthday to him. Evan was so embarrassed. LOL!

3) They turned all lights off, so we were engulfed by darkness and silence. Then an Astronomer came out, gave us a fun talk about Southern Hemisphere stars and constellations

4) A walk through the Field of Lights! There is no words to describe how cool this art installation is, so I will just give you some facts:
- the artwork is made up of 300,000 individual components
- over 380 km of optical fibers is used
- 50,000 individual handcrafted delicate lights stems covering an area of over 49,000 square meters, equivalent to over 7 football fields

Standing in the darkness, looking up, you see thousands of brilliant stars twinkling; look down, you see a field of lights stretching to the horizon! The lights change color every 6 to 12 seconds, seems to have a life of its own.

The time seems to be frozen as you lose yourself in the awesomeness of the perfect conversion of nature and art, and the truth of “forever and always” creates a sense connection between the ourselves and something larger than life. This is one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had!

This concludes our time at Outback, since we are leaving for Sydney tomorrow.Read more
Traveler Ended on a real high!
6/6/19Reply
Wow!! how exciting!
6/7/19Reply
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2019 Australia Trip - Day 10

2019 Australia Trip - Day 11

2019 Australia Trip - Day 12