Hey hey from the Red Centre!

Hi everyone, hope you are all well, surviving the snow at home. We are currently in Alice Srpings recovering from our 3 day tour to Uluru (Ayers Rock), The Olgas and Kings Canyon.

We had such as amazing time, from walking 3-4 hours on walks in 45 degrees C heat, drinking warm water and then sleeping in the outback under the stars in swags around a campfire, toasting marshmellows (yum yum)

Again we had a great gang on the bus who we have been chilling out with over the last few days in town and around the pool here (more later....)

Highlights of the tour were that we walked around THe Rock - the base walk in sweltering heat in the afternoon, but it was a great experience with all the aboriginal stories. We watched the sunset over Uluru whilst making dinner outside, such a cool thing!

For our food, we had lots of classic aussie stuff like Kangaroo Sausages, Camel Chilli and Ruth had yucky vegimite on toast - I have tried it but I dont like it :)

We also walked through Kings Canyon, which was a really good walk, which started with Heart Attack hill, which was seriuosly steep for 20 mins - not nice. THen halfway round was a natural waterhole called the Garden of Eden, where we all took a deserved swim!

THere was loads more tour stuff, but we will tell you when we get back....

Since arriving back in Alice (which is a strange but facinating place with lots of aboriginal people about and classic country folk!) we have sampled the bars of the town with our group, with us both suffering from hangovers!. Also with the gang, We have been to the Reptile centre, which was really, really good. We got to hold 3 types of lizard as well as a huge 6ft snake, which almost engulfed ruthie, but she got the the better of 'Gavin' the snake. THey also had a huge croc and we got some wicked pics!

Then yesterday, we wnet to the Royal Flying Doctors Museum, which was also facinating!

We have met loads of cool people so far on our trips and our hostel here - Annies PLace. We hope to meet up with a lot of people when back in london.

Don't worry, we have lots of pics to put up for our adventures above, but the computers here are slow and we are flying out to Cairns in about 2hrs to start our trip back down to Sydney.

Looking forward to getting onto the reef sometime, as well as chilling on the beaches and looking at all the surf shops for us to buy stuff to fill our already full backpacks. (Between the both of us we can stand up straight with our rucksacks on - honest!)

Gotta go, will upload pics soon, miss everyone, keep posting messages.

Ruth & ad

xxxxx