The next few (or 5 or 6) blog post have been written retroactively. I was without long term internet access for about a week, and a very eventful week at that, so I will do my best to update my blog readers on the most important and exciting events. Remember- dates are day/month.
7/8- 8/8:
After a long ride on the Greyhound from Adelaide with intermittent sleep, we were dropped off in the cold, dark of pre-dawn Coober Pedy. I was a little horrified to see that our hostel did not come to pick us up from the terminal, and became even more stressed when we approached the door of the hostel to find that reception does not open until 8 am. It was now approximately 5:15 am and hovering between 6 and 8 degrees Celcius.
Mom and I had nothing we could do but bundle up and wait for daylight. Around 7 am some people checking out early offered to let us have their room once they left to hang out and be warm. We gladly agreed and used the strangers' room until 8 am. We checked in and dragged our bags 6 feet underground to the underground rooms, only to discover our room we were signed up for had no doors. I was willing to just deal, but I could tell Mom wasn't having it, so I offered to go upstairs and speak to the old prospectory looking guy who check me in to see how much more we would have to pay to have a door on our room. It was only $15 more a night- sold. We moved into the improved room and went upstairs to meet George for the morning tour of Coober Pedy. Someone named Rudy was actually the person who picked us up and gave the tour. He was also pretty entertaining, giving us inexact details of his life throughout (he had 9 kids, he had no kids/ and ex wife, a dead wife, his wife ran off to the circus.) The tour was the same tour I took in 2010, a loop around town, including an underground church, a grass less golf course, and a model of a mine. We had Rudy drop us off at Josephine's Art Gallery after the tour, just in time to feed the baby roos. The take care of orphaned kangaroos here and work on donations. It was fun and they were of course very cute.
We went to John's Pizza Bar for lunch, me chancing food poisoning from 2010, but there are not many restaurants in Coober Pedy. I got a fried chicken sandwich that was good and mom got pizza. We killed time that afternoon by browsing opals, even though we had done all our buying that morning. We went on the Breakaways tour with George, which is always my favorite part of Coober Pedy. Unfortunately, we had a very obnoxious couple on the tour with us, but we did our best to block them out and concentrate on the natural beauty.
After the tour, we got takeaway yiros from John's and about 1000 fries. We were so exhausted from little sleep on the Greyhound that we took showers and were asleep by 9pm.
The next morning, we were up and dropped off by the old prospector by 5am (literally, he kicked us out of the bus into the cold and smoked inside even though the Greyhound wasn't there yet.) Again, we waited in the cold. The Greyhound was about an hour and a half late, saying it didn't leave Adelaide the night before until 7:30 (scheduled for 6 pm departure). Finally, on the bus again around 6:30am, the bus ride has no real highlights- some sleep, some reading, a crap lunch, only short breaks to make up for the dips leaving Adelaide an hour and a half late. We arrived in Alice Springs by 2:30pm and checked in at The Rock Tour office. We were told our tour would be 14 people and that we were with Dingo, which is immediately intimidating. We drag our bags down through the Todd Mall and check into the YHA. We unpack and repack our supplies for the next 3 days into smaller bags because we have been told many times we cannot have big bags for the tour. We put the large bags into the hostel's long term storage and set out to climb Anzac Hill for the sunset.
After taking pictures from all angels of Anzac Hill, we climbed back down and went to Bojangles for dinner (not our Bojangles, but an Aussie outback bar). We both had kangaroo, and it was delicious and we both ate every bite. We went back to the hostel, used the internet, called dad, and were in bed again by 9 pm.
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