I had mentioned the bush fires earlier - here you can see the difference between a section that was burned and a section that wasn't. Later we would drive past miles and miles of blackened countryside.
Here's one last shot of Uluru, with The Olgas in the distance.
Back at the hotel, we boarded a bus for the five-hour journey to Alice Springs. The first part of this wasn't bad - we had good seats and the driver, Peter, kept up a constant and amusing narration about what we were seeing. Unfortunately, about a couple of hours out, we were to change buses (and drivers). This time, the seats had so little legroom that my knees were pressing into the seat in front of me - and that was before the guy in the next row decided to recline his seat. The next few hours were agony - not helped at all by the driver who seemed to have a rather weak notion of where his lane was.
Finally, we arrived in Alice Springs, considered the center of the Outback. Our hotel was the Alice Springs Resort, which we did not care for at all.
With a couple of suggestions from the desk clerk, we headed out to look for dinner. It was about 6 PM, but the "central district" was pretty much closed. We ended up at a promising-looking restaurant called The Outlander, but the food was rather insipid.
© 2002 Steve Lionel - - Home