Mmmm, camel.

So here I am in Alice Springs, in the Red Centre of Australia. I am so glad that all of my airplane flights for this trip are now finished, hooray!!

I had a window seat for the flight, and it was awesome to see the scenery change below us. It really put into perspective just how much of Australia is untouched. As the landscape changed to vast, open red spaces, pretty much all signs of civilisation died away. Occasionally there would be a long, straight dirt road stretching off into the distance, and the dirt on these was so red it gave the impression of veins crossing the desert. Coming up to Alice Springs was a shock; all of a sudden there were paved roads and buildings coming up from the middle of nowhere.

When I stepped off the plane, the hot, dry air hit me in the face, and I almost cried because it reminded me so much of getting off the plane in Arizona. The dirt around here is all red, dotted with eucalyptus trees and shrubs. There are little skinks and lots of parrots everywhere. My hostel is a five minute walk from the city centre, and because someone decided to stay an extra night at the last minute, I have a single room for tonight! It's awesome after staying in dorm accommodation for the past ten days, although I'm going to dorms tomorrow and I'll be in the dorms here when I get back.

Anyway, a lot of people don't like Alice Springs much, saying it's essentially a big shopping mall in the middle of the desert. I kind of liked the pedestrian mall area, it had a lot of art galleries and little outlet stores that reminded me of Santa Fe. The sunset here was incredible and all of the surrounding rocks and even the dirt changed all different colours.

I decided to have dinner in town rather than cook at my hostel. There is a lot of catering to tourists here, so the menus have a lot of bush meat on them. I decided to be adventurous and ordered a 'Bushman's Plate', which was a small dish with crocodile, emu, camel, and kangaroo meat, as well as various vegetables and spreads with pita bread. Out of the four meats, I liked the emu the best. It was smoked and I liked the flavour. The crocodile was kind of strange, and the camel tasted a little bit like when you have beef the next day after sticking it in the refrigerator. That's the best way I can describe it, anyway.

So now I am here, and tomorrow morning I am getting up very early and catching a Greyhound bus to Yulara, the closest place to Uluru. I am very excited!