Saturday October 1 – Sunday October 2

The flight from LA to Brisbane was uneventful, but a long 14 hours. I watched a bunch of new movies, including the new Top Gun, which was pretty good. We landed 20 minutes later than expected, which caused me to miss my flight to Alice Springs. I actually got through customs/immigration and biosecurity pretty quickly, but still missed it by 20 minutes. D’oh. Qantas was very helpful about it and booked me on another flight that arrived later in the afternoon, no it was no longer direct and I had to connect through Darwin NT. I think I’m going to see almost every airport in Australia, ha! Seeing the kangaroo painted on the plane put me in a better mood.

At 5pm, I finally arrived in Alice Springs. The airport was really small.

Seeing cows had become a running joke on my hike in New Zealand, and I’ve already seen my first cow here in Australia…in the baggage claim area.

I called for a taxi and it arrived 15 minutes later. Like 20 other people were waiting around for a taxi too, and 7 of them jumped in the van with me and we split the costs. I’m not sure what their plan was if I hadn’t called for a taxi….

I checked into the hostel at 6:30 and settled into my room, and then went right back out to the Woolworths (grocery store here). I always buy Nutella for my hikes, and of course I had to buy the Australian-themed one.

I also bought some snacks for the hostel, and despite them sounding like terrible flavors, I just had to buy them to find out what they tasted like.

The hostel had a nice pool, but I wasn’t able to go in it since it had just closed at 8pm.

I spoke with one of the ladies running the hostel, and she said that I might be able to get a ride to the trailhead tomorrow with the hostel owner. That would make the trip so much easier, since I was planning on hitchhiking the 2-hour drive to the start. Hopefully that works out!

After being on planes for 35 hours, my shower that night felt really good. I did a little more packing, and was in bed by 9pm. I would say it felt like a long day… but I think it was really 2 days, crossing the international date line is confusing!