Yoohoo I'm in Uluru!

Just came back from an amazing time in the "Red Centre", visiting Uluru (Ayer's Rock), The Olgas and King's Canyon. Had only 5 days away from Sydney, but it felt like weeks. Its such a huge contrast landing at Alice Springs coming from Sydney. I left behind the humid breezes of a busy high-rise-filled city centre, and landed 3 hours later in a roasting dry 35 degree desert, where the only building around for miles was the airport itself. The smell of the air too was of warm sweaty leaves, yum.

After arriving I went to the Desert Park in Alice Springs as my tour didn't start til the next day. Lots of interesting mini lizards (including a legless lizard, which isn't a snake because it has ears. Don't say I never teach you anything!), hopping marsupial mice, funny sounding birds, and of course more kangaroos and emus.

Then back at the hostel went and had few drinks with Sally who I'd met off the plane and was doing the same tour. At 1am got to bed a little drunker, then had to get up at 5am for an early start!! I forgot to change the time ( its half an hour behind Sydney time) and therefore woke up hlf an hour early too. Good job there was lots of driving so got lots of sleep on the bus. We went to Uluru first because if its too hot they don't let you climb up it. We were lucky it was only 34 degrees and the cut off point is 35, so about half the group opted to walk up the rock. The Aborigines say they prefer that you don't climb up the rock, so I was unsure what to do, and had been thinking about it for weeks before, asking Aussies what they thought. Some acted as though it was a ridiculous idea to even entertain and that the Abbo's heritage and wishes should be respected, and others didn't even think it was an issue. After hearing that it is forbidden to climb The Olgas (another bunch of rocks we visited), I decided to go ahead and climb. I think part of the reason they don't like people climbing is that many people have died climbing Uluru, because it is a dangerous climb, not just because its steep and there's not much to hold on to, but also because of the heat which causes people to collapse. So that's obviously not something they want to be responsible for. It is a really hard climb, especially in that heat. Took about 3 hours to get to the top and across a bit. The top isn't as flat as it looks in the pictures, it actually has lots of steep "valleys" or cracks to climb up and down, and there's nothing at all to hold onto at that point. I was also surprised to find trees and even shrimpy things and other strange water creatures in the puddles up there.

Camping in our swags under the stars was my fave bit. The first night I got to sleep easily, but the second, we stayed up drinking and talking about spiders and one of the rangers on the campsite/farm we stayed at found a python. We'd also woken up after the first night to find dingo tracks through our campsite...so the second night every tiny sound I heard scared me, and I thought a redback was going to kill me in my sleep. Getting up at 5am to go and see the rock at sunrise wasn't so much fun either...

Our guide was really cool, telling us all sorts of stories about the Aborigines and plant remedies and rituals etc. Although he wasn't allowed to tell us some stuff because it was too "sacred". He did tell us about a cringeful disgusting ritual they do to boys when they become men, and also later in their life (when they become old men, I guess). I've put a picture here so you get an idea what it involves...

It was interesting seeing how little the landscape changes out there too. We drove for

about 5 hours each of the three days of the tour, and every time I opened my eyes to look out the window, it was the same sparse dry flat land. Although there were a lot more trees than I'd imagined there would be. There had just been a bit of rain the week before we arrived, and we were going at the beginning of winter, so I can't imagine what it must be like in summer with temperatures in the 50s!

By the last night our group had bonded quite well and we all had a meal together back at the hostel in Alice Springs, and many jugs of beer. Next day I flew back to Sydney to dark and dreary RAIN. I felt like I'd flown to London by mistake!! I'm gonna have to come back to this country and explore more (as well as all the other countries I still wanna see).

New Zealand - South island

Places: Nelson, Christchurch
I've rushed through NZ so quickly I've hardly seen anything! On ANZAC day, me and Ellen went to an art class and painted pretty pictures! (One in the middle is our teacher's unfinished one) Neither of us had painted for TWELVE YEARS! So we were very impressed with the results, even if we did say so ourselves. Ellen has feijoa and lemon and lime trees in her garden! Feijoas are lovely soft green fruits, and which reminds me I had some mini kiwi fruits too, which you just eat whole, and they had red ones too. Yum v nice.

And yes I know I need a haircut!

Update 6/5/05: Ellen kindly cut my hair for me! Thank you! I also did one of the "Great Walks", the Abel Tasman Coastal Walk. I did it over 4 days, staying in huts along the way. Very beautiful scenery. A bit chilly but I still went in the sea and froze. Also saw seals at one point, and got really close to them, but not as close as at Kaikoura, down along the East coast on way to Christchurch, we went whale-watching first and saw a couple of sperm whales - v cool - and then I went on a walk to a seal-spotting point, and the seals were practically lying in the carpark! It said you should stay 10 metres away from them as they can get dangerous, but these ones just didn't care, they were scratching their bums and stretching their flippers and completely ignoring all us tourists clicking away on our cameras.

New Zealand - North island

Places: Auckland, Bay of Islands (Paihia), Rotorua, Wellington
Well rainy and cold(ish) as it may be, its still a beautiful country! Up in Paihia went on a boat trip (and got seasick) and saw lots of bottlenose dolphins, and dragged along in the boon next to the boat! Rotorua stinks - of sulphur - steam comes out the drains as well as off the hundreds of boiling mud pools and lagoons, and lots of really pretty patterns created by all the volcanic activity here. Went on long bikeride around a big forest. All very pretty.

Patagonia - from bikini to mittens

I only had a few days left in South America, and still hadn´t seen any of the south of Argentina, so I did a quick 10 day trip, and will have to go back in the future, because it was brilliant, and there´s still so much I didn´t see!

I arrived in Trelew on the 1st March. My first night was in a surprisingly really nice hotel, and I spent most of the night worrying that I´d misheard when they told me the price...but it was nice to have my own bathroom for a change. I didn´t see any Welsh people, but apparently they were around there somewhere. There was a small museum about the first Welsh settlers, 160 of them who came across to get away from the nasty English. They lived in these huts carved into the rock on the coast when they first arrived, before they could build proper houses, and you can still see where the rock has been carved away. Got to Puerto Madryn on the 2nd, and hired a bike and rode 14km to a protected site where I saw a whole colony of sea lions! It was really amazing, I didn´t expect to get so close to them, but I was on a cliff just above a small beach where they´d all congregated, and they were so noisy and fighting with each other (in a friendly way I think!). It was really a nice surprise, especially after I`d cycled all that way on sandy (and slippery!) roads in the sun with no shade at all. All the land around was just scrub and sand. I met someone later on that had been swimming with the sea lions! Apparently it was very cold and there was very poor visibility in the water, but the sea lions came right up close and were very playful. I also thought they would kill you but apparently the biting was just friendly too. There´s also the largest colony of magellic penguins in nearby Madryn, but I only had time to see one dead one I found on the beach :( I did spend some time on a nicer bit of the beach sunbathing too, as it was lovely and warm, in the late 20s I think.

Got the overnight bus down to a dull, drab and depressing town in the south called Rio Gallegos. The bus trip was cool though, I started off sitting next to a heavy metal band - all dressed in black with long hair and sunglasses, which was funny, but after that the sights outside were brilliant - there were small lagoons with flamingoes and emus or ostriches kept running across the road, and apart from that, it was just desertland.

After escaping Gallegos, I got to El Calafate, and this was more like it. Very "outdoorsy", in the middle of nowhere, just a small town with nothing around it. I took a boat tour of the glaciers, which were very impressive, and of course it was freeeeeezing. There were about 200 tourists on the boat, which was a bit annoying, but I guess I have to expect other people to visit places as well as just myself. The water got a bit rough for about an hour, and I felt kinda sea sick, but wasn´t as bad as some of the others on the boat, who I really felt sorry for! Everyone got handed plastic bags just in case. The water clamed down though, and the first glacier we saw was amazing, the ice is a really striking blue colour, because of the minerals in the water and the way the light is reflected. We could here the ice cracking and a bit broke off while we were watching. So it was a long day looking at ice and being cold, but well worth it.

My last two days I spent in El Chaltén, which is a bit further north than Calafate, but smaller and less busy. It has a beautiful national park which is really well looked after, so much so that we could drink ANY of the water there, in the lakes and streams, and from the taps, which I haven´t been able to do anywhere else. I went on SUCH a long walk yesterday to see some of the sights in the park - more glaciers and lagoons, and it started snowing! It felt so weird that I´d been sunbathing just a few days before, in the same country, and now was freezing alive in the snow! Despite the freezingness, it was really lovely in El Chaltén, and Patagonia is the area I most want to return to so far, as I didn´t have time to do so many things and go to so many places!

Iguazu / Iguaçu falls

Over two days I visited both sides (Argentinian and Brasilian) of the Iguazu falls - really amazing sight. The first day on the Argie side, was a lot longer as you get to see lots of individual falls (there are 275 altogether!), and do a lot more walking around. We saw el gargantua diablo last, which is a huge huge HUWGE expanse of waterfall, with loads of mist and rainbows in the mist. Pretty amazing. Also saw lots of wildlife, which was quite tame '- big lizards - although they didn´t stop long enough for photos typically! We also saw a whole family of "coatimundi" too which are small rodent/pig-type creatures with longish noses. On the Brasilian side, the tour of the falls is a lot shorter, because you get more of a panoramic view, but its definitely worth seeing both sides, as here you can get right up close to one of the falls, and get soaked by all the mist coming off, its really spectacular.