G'day all you lovely cold people at home,

We're in Alice Springs and Chris says it really is a "bonza" town!

Well, Tennant Creek turned out to be fun as we had a great day tour to the Devils Marbles. There were only 3 of us on the tour in total so it was really personal. We set off at 11am and stopped at Termite City on the way to the Marbles. There were approx 2000 termite mounds in the one area so it was pretty amazing! We then went to the Devils Marbles which really were quite spectacular. There's boulders everywhere in all different formations, sizes and shapes. Well, it was good fun climbing over them even though the heat was a killer. We then enjoyed a proper outback Aussie BBQ cooked over a wooden fire in the middle of nowhere. We had steak, bubble and squeak, onions, corn on the cob, bread, coleslaw and some authentic Billy Tea! It was such a great experience! Our tour guide was really nice and the other guest was a Swiss German girl called Sybille who was really nice. It was a good bunch and definitely a good trip to remember in Tennant Creek.

Next came the horrid bus journey which didn't set off until 3am and got into Alice Springs at 9am. We did manage to sleep a bit at the hostel and on the bus but we were aching as it's not the easiest of things to do.

Anyway, once in Alice Springs we found our accomodation, Toddy's, but unfortunately it was too early to check in so we left our cases in storage and headed out for breakfast. What else is there to do hey?! Well, we had a nice breakfast and wandered around the market before heading back to the hostel. The atmosphere is great with it being the 2006 Masters Games this week. The masters is a selection of sports games (tennis, netball, hockey, bowls, cycling.....) for the mature aged people from all over Australia. There's over 4100 visitors and all of them are really friendly and having such fun. It's great!

Well after a nice refreshing shower in the hostel, we went for a wander into the town, did some food shopping and then planned our stay. We've actually decided to stay for a week rather than 5 nights as we love it so much and it still means we have 8nights in Adelaide so it's all good. We've book 2 tours now as we want to make the best of our time here so we've got a 2 day tour tomorrow and a quad biking tour on Friday (what fun).

Well, we get picked up from our accommodation at 6am tomorrow morning and first visit the Kings Canyon where we have a guided tour and then head to Mt Ebenezer for tea and we stay in a 3.5 star motel for the night. We then set off at 9am on Wednesday and spend the day at Ayers Rock. We get to walk around the base, go to a visitors centre and then the day in finished off with a champagne BBQ watching the sunset over Uluru so we're dead excited. We had booked a 1 day tour to Ayers Rock only but after looking into things more we realised that we really wanted to see Kings Canyon and we thought hey why don't we stay over so it spreads the travelling out a bit. How exciting does it all sound!

On Friday we've booked to do a 2hour quad biking tour in the outback which should be fun. We saw it advertised in the Greyhound magazine and thought we'd love to do it so yes we are. We want to do everything we can so we don't have any regrets so we're 'going for it'! 

Well, today has been a quiet day really as we caught up on our sleep, wandered around the shops and bought a few souvenirs. We also went to an Aboriginal Art gallery which was really good and educational. We can't decided whether to buy a picture or not as we don't want it to look odd when we get home. We saw some lovely things but we're going to have a think about it as we are here til Sunday so we've got time. Oh and the highlight of today? We found out that Alice Springs has a Jay Jays - woo woo! It's nice to have found a decent shop in the outback (Chris says there are definitely parallels with a Town Like Alice). So yes I bought a short khaki skirt, Chris got 2 polo T-shirts and I got 1 polo Tshirt and guess how much it all cost - 20 pounds in total! What a bargain! We're all kitted out for our Ayers rock adventure now! hehehe!