Red Center

Just finished off an awesome weekd at World Ultimate Club Championships. Our team Bombing Mad fatties came in ranked 16th in the world. The week was full of ups and downs. At the end of week we had successfully beat our seed by taking out the #1 seed in the world and placed 8th overall. Yeah fatties:) (That the name we refer to ourselves on the team). Supposedly our win against the #1 seed was so suprising that within a day it mad ultimate news around the world. Mischief the team we defended has won the UPA championships the previous year and was not well liked in the ultimate community so there were a lot of people very happy with us.

Sunday Nov 19th

Arrived at Ayers Rock from Perth, it was very very hot. Our (Julie, Noah, Chris) plan was to take our 4 wheel drive rent all and do Ayers rock, the olgas and kings canyon then drive to alice springs. Julie insisted that we get a 4 wheel drive so that we could do some off roading. We were able to get a sweet deal from a travel agent in Scarborough in perth. She said saved us 300 to 400 in total for the flights and the rental cars. Vey nice lady named Gail. At some points during our 3 day trip I probably sure she wished she had insisted so much!

Ayers Rock is a big ass red rock in the middle of the australia. Rumors has it was a meterite that landed. We arrived a couple of hours before sunset and after doing some groceeries and checking in at the Pinoneer Hotel we headed to do the sunset. Both Chris and I have very nice digital slr cameras and so we looking forward to photograhing the sunset off of Ayers rocks. Expectations were high and as such we were a little disappointed. Though we did get some very nice shots of the sunset over the horizon itself. I promise I will post some pictures as soon as I figure out how:)

The next morning woke up very very early to try to catch the sunset from the olgas, which is about 50km away from Ayers rock. If you know me well, you know that I love my sleep so waking up at 4:00AM to catch sunset at 5:15 is very very tough. Expectations were fairly low. Most of the tour guides told us that the sunrise was a lot more beautiful then the sunset. Its funny how the things you least expect often turn out to the most beautiful. The shots from the Olgas that I got were awesome. I promise .. once I figure out how to posted them I will share!!

After sunrise we do the valley of the winds walk which is supposed to be 3 hours long. All of us being ultimate players and being very confident in our fitness level we assume that we would of course finish within 2 hours. We actually finished in abut 2 1/2 hrs.

To Climb or not to Climb

We finished around 11am and decided to check out the Ayers rock. Both Noah and I will still considering climbing up the rock. Though we are permitted to the aborignals strongly prefer that we don't and often the climb is close if the temp goes after 36c or the winds speeds exeed a set amount. My personal opinion is that they don't want ppl to do the climb so they just find excuses. Julie had decided already not to do the walk as Mark (one of our team mates) had guilted into not doing it because he believes that it would be disrepecting the natives. Both of mine and Noah personal opinions were that its a piece of natural, and that they we respective their beliefs we don't neccsarry agree with them. All this contemplation was invain as they climb was closed as the forcasted hight today was 34c. I got a nice picture of the "climb closed" sign. Noah and I thought about doing the climb anyway and pretending that we don't speak enghish if we were caught. Unfortunately the do not climb sign was posted in 20 different languages so that would of worked.

Based walk

So you are in a desert, its around high noon and its 34c outside. No smart ppl would go to a pool or sit in their a/c hotel rooms. But the silly 4 of us decided to do the 3hr based walk around Ayers rock. The first 30 mintues was very nice and got some cool shots. The next 2 1/2hrs were just painfully and very hot. On top of us all the flies seem to like me a lot. Which was fortunate for Noah, Julie and Chris:). Around the base walk about half of the interesting places to take shoots of you are not permitted to as they are sacred grounds where native cermonies take place. My advice is do the walk either earlier morning or very late during the day when it is a lot cooler. Also I would go in Australia's fall season which is sept, oct when it is cooler and if you want to do the climb you would be able to. So after 4-5hrs of hiking in the sun we all really looked forward to the drive to kings canyon.

Kings Canyon

We arrived in Kings Canyon a little bit before 4pm and actually considered doing the Kings canyon walk righ then, but quickly came to our senses since we had just hiked for 4-5hrs already that day. I would tell how beautiful our drive from Ayers's rock to Kings Canyon was but I was passed out. Kings canyon is about 300km north of Ayers's rock. I took the passagenger seat and was supposed to help nagivate, but quickly passed out for 2 hrs. Did I tell you that I love sleep.

We were initially thinking about sleeping in and starting our hike of kings canyon around 9pm, but we quickly came to senses and didn't want to repeat of yesterday torture of walking in the heat of the sun for 3 hrs again.

The hike at kings canyon was beauitful and a lot more enjoy espeically since we started the hike at 7am when it was a lot cooler. The hike takes you on the rim of the canyon and so there are a lot of beautiful views. Promise to send u pictures as very soon.

Our next stop was Alice Springs. Its about a 3-4 hr drive. And since we had a 4 wheel drive we decided to the take the rough roads, which turned out to be tougher than we had anticipated or hoped for. Most of the roads were gravel and dirty. Where it got rough was the turn off to Palm Valley. Palm Valley is an oasis in the middle of the dessert with palm trees and tropical vegatations. It was highly recommended. I took the drive seat for this part of the trip and boy was it fun and scary at the same time. This was my first time driving a 4wheel drive and supposedly I was going a little too fast:) We were good for almost all of the 4km offroad trail except near the end. We battled against a set of sand dunes and unfortunately we losted. Spend the next 1/2hr trying to dig ourselves out with our frisbees as shovels. The fortunately a tour bus calm along to help us. He didn't look to happy that we were blocking his way and gave us a dirty look as he asked us if we had enabled the 4wd drive ..lol. As it turned out we hadn't correctly. In addition to change the drive you we also suppose to turn the locks on the front of the wheels. Of doing that it was all easy going. We head our way and go to begining of the palm valley trail. At this point we were all exhausted and decided to skip the 1hr hike to the oasis. We decided to wait until the tour bus came so we wouldn't run into them on the trail. The funny thing was that they didn't show up, so we decided to head back anyway. We all joking said maybe they go stuck in the same sand pit that we did. LOL the funny thing was they had!! It turns out that the tour driver that was helping us and giving us a dirty look for not knowing how to enabled our 4wheel drive locks hadn't check his own vechicle himself and was not stuck. We help him get out. At this point we let Chris do all the driving back to the main road towards Alice Spring where we catch our flight to Carins.

Have to head out now since internet time is almost out and have check on some transportation stuff. Next carins and so real vacation. I think Julie and I are done with this streneously hiking 4hrs a day vacation and looking forward to a more relaxing rest of our trip.