Alice Springs Day 2

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We had a relatively early start this morning. My switching beds last night didn't help anyone. Clay set an alarm for 5am and it went off at midnight. He set a different alarm after that but neither of us slept well. I was up around 4:30am calling it quits and we just got up. We went to breakfast at 6am. Our tour pickup today was at 6:55am. The all day (10.5 hours advertised but it was closer to 12 hours) tour was AAT Kings Palm Valley Safari by 4WD (A5). It was a very hard day. We did not enjoy it at all. If someone had told me I could see the Palm Valley in 15 minutes by helicopter instead, I'd have done it. It has been instead slow, prolonged torture. It was a cloudless hot day today finally. The weather we'd expected here was finally here and we suffered for it. I will grant that the scenery was spectacular but we'd never have booked this ourselves. Again it was included in GSR's The Territory Complete. Our first stop of the day was the art studio of Kathleen Buzzacott. We spent about 15 minutes there. We also visited an old Lutheran Mission area called Hermannsburg. It was interesting. We stopped there for a comfort stop and a scones and cream with tea or coffee. The guide also picked up our picnic lunch there for later in the afternoon. We returned their coolers and had another comfort stop on the way back to Alice Springs. We had a hard walk after a hard ride in Palm Valley. It was 22km off road to get there and it took 3 hours. You probably can't imagine. I couldn't. The guide took us on the valley floor as he didn't think we could handle the advertised rim walk. He was right. After the picnic he led a second shorter walk. I didn't go along with a handful of others. There were 24 people in our giant bus/truck ATV. It was nearly a full load. The best part of the day was learning about and seeing our first brumby. We saw several brumbies today, most them pretty close to the bus and one of the last was a mother with a youngster. They were large and beautiful, not at all like the Outer Banks wild horses so it was a bit of a surprise. Plus we hadn't heard of them before today.

We are beyond tired, exhausted. Tomorrow we have to check out by 10am to catch our Lassters transfer into town. They will hold our luggage for the day. We will try to stay in town until the 2pm return transfer. If it keeps getting hotter then it will be harder than it was yesterday. The transfer to the Ghan tomorrow is at 4pm. It costs $15 again. The Ghan departs at 6:15pm.

We have no Internet on the Ghan. So no Internet until after 6pm the day after tomorrow. I'll try to post as soon as I can. The 2 days following that are at another National Park, so don't be surprised if I can't post then either. We'll be back in Darwin for 2 nights so I should be able to post regularly. Then there will be air travel to make the long journey home. What I am saying is the end is nigh and posts are going to be sporadic here at the end. Don't panic.

Photos