This tour really is getting more exhausting by the day. At the same time as the temperature slowly rising as we make our way through the red centre, the humidity is also getting much harder to bear. After getting a good nights sleep, I was really glad that I hadn't had to get up at the crack of dawn to climb Uluru - instead, I took a leisurely breakfast with the other members of the group who had elected not to get up early, which was most of them to be honest. At just after 9, the coach returned to the hotel with the climbers already on board, and collected us for our trip out to Kings Canyon. Needless to say, the handful of people waiting for us on board were very red faced and looked as though they really needed the comfy coach seats - but they immediately started chattering on at us nonetheless about what a fantastic experience it had been and how the rest of us were just a bunch of little girls. Which was nice. Those who had fearlessly traipsed all the way up to the top of the rock spent most of the rest of the day boasting about it, while the not inconsiderate number who only got as far as chicken rock remained strangely silent. Have you noticed that - it's always the real idiots who seem to have the energy to do these ridiculously pointless things, there really must be some sort of connection between the strongman gene and the ignorant tosser gene!

This afternoon, everybody on board was given a certificate, which frankly just rubbed salt into the wound. Those who made it to the top got a big glossy one that looked the part, while those who only got to chicken rock got a smaller one that said that they had only made it a third of the way, but that they'd probably have better luck next time. The vast majority of us who didn't even go, got a certificate which said "took one look and gave up". Well, that's nice isn't it? I don't see anything on there about "Respected local Aboriginal beliefs"

Having regained our full complement of passengers, we headed out for a leisurely one kilometre walk along the base of Uluru to see some Aboriginal cave paintings from two thousand years ago and to see what a water hole looked like - because obviously we were all terminally stupid and couldn't have put the words water and hole together in our minds on our own. This time, the walk was much more relaxed in the shade of Uluru, and it helped that we were joined by Mike the coach captain who was very funny and kept us all in stitches the whole time. After the walk, during which I really pushed the boat out and led the group most of the way, cracking jokes with Mike, we stopped for three quarters of an hour at the Ayres Rock Visitors Centre for cups of tea and several gallons of water. It was really starting to get hot by now - Australia likes to start the day off by lulling people into a false sense of security before slapping the full temperature on them later in the morning. By the time we got off the coach for lunch, everybody had their huge floppy Akubra hats firmly planted on their heads and were unidentifiable below numerous layers of sunscreen and insect repellent.

Some of the party had booked to go on a scenic flight over Uluru and the Olgas at this stage, but for me it was prohibitively expensive. The rest of us were dropped off back at the hotel where we could melt into a pool of sweat for a couple of hours while the people with all the money flew around in their light aircraft for a bit. Then, it was back on board the coach for the journey to nearby Kings Canyon where we were staying for the night. Not in the canyon, obviously - I did still have just enough money to spare to pay for the hotel!

The next day, we had another walk. This time, however, we had a choice - we could either do a seven kilometre jaunt up the side of the canyon and around the rim, or we could stay at ground level and walk along the base. I hadn't fully made up my mind which I was going to do until this morning - I had thought it wise to wait and see what the temperature was like before deciding whether or not to take my life into my hands hiking seven kilometres up and around a canyon. As it turned out, it was another early morning (surprise, surprise) and the twenty-five of us brave enough to even attempt the walk had to be up and ready to be on board the coach at half past six. This meant that the hotel laid on breakfast at six, and I booked myself an early morning call for 5.30. All in all, it probably wasn't worth going to bed.

We didn't even have time for a nap on the coach - the canyon was virtually on our doorstep. When we arrived, we paired off into two groups - those who were suicidal enough to attempt the 7 kilometre hike up the canyon wall, around the top and back down the other side; and those who just fancied a leisurely little stroll along the base by the side of a trickling stream. I thought, since it wasn't particularly hot yet, that I'd go for the main hike, and it was mainly the older members of the group who stayed behind - but nothing could have prepared any of us for just how strenuous the walk was going to be. The trouble with Australians is that they all immediately make you feel insecure as soon as you see them - the men are all bronzed with muscles on their muscles, and a lot of the women seem to be super models who wear T-Shirts with "Yeah, like I'd look at you" scrawled across them. For this reason, tour guides tend to forget that the rest of us are not necessarily like this and will casually ask if anyone wants to do a "slightly tougher" hike without mentioning that "slightly tougher" involves wrestling alligators and diving from cliffs onto concrete. I knew that the 7 kilometre hike around Kings Canyon would be tough, and I had tried to factor in the fact that the guide was probably making it sound easier than it was, but none of us were at all prepared for what we were getting into.

Bolstered by the promise from Mike that the actual walk around the rim would be "a walk in the park" once we got up there, and hoping to god that this particular park wasn't full of crocodiles and quicksand, we put on our backpacks and began the climb. It was tough going. The path wasn't so much a path as a collection of rocks which had been kicked aside by previous hikers. The ground had a tendency to slip underfoot as small rocks came loose, and the route just refused to go in anything even remotely resembling a straight line so that what could've been a quick path to the top became a twisting-turning route about twice as long as it needed to be. By the time we were about two thirds of the way up, most of us had fallen over at least twice and many of the group were sitting on rocks along the way, refusing to get up until somebody carried them. Even the toughest guy in the party, who wasn't exactly averse to taking the piss out of anyone who couldn't walk twelve miles up a vertical cliff in four seconds, was finding it hard - he was clearly incredibly annoyed that he wasn't even at the front and that that honour went - oh how we got our own back on him later - to a young lady of a very slight build who hadn't even previously wanted to go on any of the walks. We were told later that there were supposed to be steps cut into the side of the canyon, but that the steps have been eroded away by all the feet marching up over them over the years until it is now a little like trying to climb a mountain - you have to scramble along, looking for handholds. I'm not going to pretend I made it all the way - most of us got almost to the top and then turned back, the only people to go on and emerge some two hours later on the other side of the canyon were a group of Canadians who clearly weren't the sort to give up on anything even if it killed them.

We drove back to the hotel, being told that we only had an hour to shower and freshen up before we would be leaving for Alice Springs. I really don't know what it is about Australian tour guides and having to get everything done yesterday - would it kill them to let us lie down once in a while? To be fair, we weren't on the road for long before stopping at the Kings Creek Visitors Centre, where we spent some time interacting with the red kangaroos they have hopping around out the back before settling down to a large buffet lunch which the tour company had been kind enough to lay on for us.

The only real grumble I have about these Aussie outside lunches is the fact that there are far too many flies around to make them a completely enjoyable experience - much of the time is spent waving insects away from your face or your food, and there just isn't any way to stop a fly landing on your sandwich just as it disappears into your mouth. The problem with flies has been getting progressively worse as we've been moving north, with the hotter temperatures resulting in them suddenly being everywhere. It's a wonder if you can see a couple of feet in front of you for flies at times. It's a real nuisance having to wave my hand in front of my face every second or two, although this is apparently just a part of life out here and it even has a name - the Australian wave.

After lunch, we found ourselves back on unmade roads again for ages because Mike insisted that it would cut 150 kilometres off the journey - which I suppose you can't argue with. Personally, I probably could've done without being shaken up and down quite so much so soon after lunch, but you can't have everything. Anything coming the other way, on the few occasions when it did, threw up so much dust that we would literally have to pull the coach up and wait for it to clear. Not, of course, that there was ever any chance of hitting anything even if we'd driven blindly on with totally obscured vision - the Australian outback has to be one of the only places on Earth where having little or no forward vision in your vehicle is not likely to kill you immediately. There's an Australian joke I heard somewhere:

"Dad, that car that just went past? What do you call that?"

"A f***ing mirage, son!"

I apologise, by the way, for the language - but it's pretty much impossible to tell an Australian joke without it. The language over here, especially in the middle of nowhere, is colourful to say the least. Some of the jokes would also be slightly funnier if so many people didn't insist that they were true. Just last night, for example, a local guy at Kings Canyon told some of the younger members of our party around the bar that the "typical" outback Australian chat-up line is for a guy to walk into a bar, wait for the music to stop and then shout out "Right, who wants a f*** then?". Several other people standing nearby just nodded in agreement, which sort of makes you wonder.

Some way into the journey to Alice Springs, Mike managed to screw up the coach by driving over the bumps in the road so fast that he has effectively bashed the underside of the vehicle on the ground and ruined the suspension. We stopped for a while, Mike looked underneath and scratched his head for a bit, walked up and down looking perplexed and then got back on saying "Sod it, she'll be right" before driving off. "She'll be right" is pretty much what Australians say to anything, and translates as "everything will be okay". They are so laid back out here, though, that you could probably tell somebody that their house had burned to the ground with their family inside and they'd just shrug and say "Oh, she'll be right". Everyone was very happy when we finally emerged onto the main road again, the axel making one last clunking sound as we mounted the road and it struck the tarmac. Mike even got a round of applause, which I thought very strange considering he'd put us all in danger of throwing up our lunch and then broken the coach. I put this down as the same sort of applause that pilots get when they land the plane without crashing into a mountain, which is pretty much their job in the first place.

Just outside Alice Springs, or "The Alice" as locals insist on calling it, we pulled into somewhere called Noel Hutchingson's Camel Farm", having been promised the chance to ride a camel. Believe it or not, camels are quite prevalent in Australia and are widely used as a mode of transport through the harsh wildness of the outback, and if you think about it this makes total sense as that's exactly what they get used for in Egypt. Nevertheless, it was still just a little on the weird side to see them walking around on the farm without a care in the world. For three dollars, we could ride a camel, so I decided it was worth a go and handed my video camera to somebody to capture the moment for posterity. I had been told by several people that by far the worst part of riding a camel is when the thing stands up in the first place - the animal actually raises it's backside from the ground first, so if you aren't prepared you may well find yourself being thrown straight off the front before you've even begun your ride. Personally, I didn't find this a problem at all and really enjoyed the experience, although the actual ride around the field was rather bumpy and did make me feel a bit as hough I was a small child going on a donkey ride along Blackpool beach. The camels certainly aren't in a hurry to get anywhere, and shuffle their feet as they go - this causes the rider to sway quite wildly from side to side, but I was far too excited about the fact that I was riding a camel to worry about things like that. As an added bonus, the person who I had leant the video camera to actually managed to work out how to take the lens cap off and turn it on just in time to capture some of it on tape.

The reason for such a remote town as Alice Springs being created in the first place was to provide a place to live for the people working the telegraph station here - set up to relay messages across the vast expanse of desert back when the country was still being explored. We stopped briefly to look at the original telegraph station on the way into town, and to see Alice's spring - after which the town gets its name. A surveyor by the name of William Mills was wandering around in the way that surveyors do when he came across a clump of rocks near to the telegraph station, around which a river was flowing. He returned to the station later that night and matter of factly told his boss "I found a spring, Sir, and I've named it Alice's spring after your lovely wife." I rather expect he got a smack in the mouth.

About Simon and Burfords Travels:

Simon Burford is a UK based travel writer. He will be re-publishing his travel blogs, chapters from his books and other miscellaneous rantings on these pages over the coming weeks and months, and the entry on this page may not necessarily reflect todays date.