Maisy and Nico arrived back in the room about 4am and were not quiet enough to keep from waking me up, but I went back to sleep anyway, and woke up too late for breakfast. I zipped up my bags after checking nothing was left behind, and headed to wait for the taxi.
The shuttle bus, which costs $15, picked up the one person who had booked it, and left at 6.25. I started to wonder if I would have been better taking that, as I had opted for a taxi due to being advised the bus was meant to depart at 6.40. It turned out after all of that though, that I had saved myself 60 cents, as the taxi arrived on time, and only cost $14.40!
I made it to check in on time, and this time my bag weighed in at 19.3kg, so I am definitely getting better at figuring out the weight distribution now!
I headed through the security gate, wihch got set off as I had forgotten to put my belt in the tray, and then I saw my bag had been set aside for a further check. The security staff advised that there was a large aerosol in the bag, and I suddenly realised I had left the cooking oil in that bag and forgotten to move it to the check in baggage. As such it had to be binned.
I boarded the plane, not doing any shopping at the departure lounge, and then was moved to emergency exit seat for take off. The person in the other seat had a Cairns local newspaper with two stories in it that made me look twice - there had been a snake attack in the street, in a place called Yorkeys Knob - which was very close to Cairns. There had also been an incident involved and armed stand off with a knife wielder at the beach in the area - making me glad I had managed to avoid both of those situations!
We were served free breakfast on the plane, of a bacon, mushroom, and asparagus frittata. It was pretty delicious, despite being plane food!
We made it to Alice Springs in good time, and I located a shuttle bus service after grabbing my checked in luggage. There were signs on the walls stating that it is against the law to solicit business for shuttle rides and that passengers should report any attempts. Fortunately there was a desk for them which people could approach so it wasn't difficult.
The bus filled up reasonably well, and we were on our way in to the town. The majority of the passengers were getting off at the Haven hostel, and I started to wonder if I had made a mistake by booking the YHA, though the YHA had better reviews. We were pointed towards the idea of climbing to the top of the Anzac hill for a good view of the town.
I dropped my bags off in the hostel, and learned that check in was 1pm. After that, I headed off to the top of the view point. The weather was hot and humid, enough to sweat while going up the gentle climb. There were lots of ants everywhere, it didn't seem like there was a spare place to put any foot down that wasn't on top of them. This made me a little nervous about staying still for very long.
When I reached the top of the hill, the forecast rain made an appearence, though it was only a drizzle. The landscape was very different to that of the coast, with red sand stone and sand/soil everywhere. A gap in the hlls in the distance was noted on the viewpoint as being a sacred place for aboriginals, being one of the only ways to get through those hills.
I headed back down and in to the town, stopping by the Picollo cafe for an all day breakfast. I was pretty hungry, and even though it was quite expensive, it was well worth it!
I headed to the pharmacy after that, as another thing I had noticed was that there were a lot of flies, and I was worried that they would cause problems with my various bites healing and also the fact that the skin around my eyes and eyelids was weeping. The pharmacist advised that there wasn't really anything they could provide to help speed along any recovery and that if I was worried about the flies I should use a net, so I headed to the shop directed and bought a mosquito net. There were also fly ones available but since I am going to be in mosquito territory soon I decided two kill two birds with one stone.
The next stop was the book shop as I realised I had yet to buy any upside down maps like the ones I had seen in Sydney a few weeks previously. I got several of these to send back to Glasgow and headed to the post office to achieve that goal.
The next stop was back at the YHA, where my plan had been to do a laundry to have a full contingent of clothes ready for the Uluru/Coober Pedy trip. This fell by the wayside though as I ended up taking a nap, and sleeping until 6pm.
When I woke up, there was a note on the door asking me to contact reception, so I went there to receive a message that the tour guide was in Alice Springs already and invited everyone to the pub for 6.30.
I headed over to the Rock Bar, and met Terry, the guide. He was sitting with Manon from the Netherlands, and at around the same time Vanessa from Minnesota arrived. We enjoyed some beers, though it was interupted a few times by some boys from Darwin who seemed determined to flirt with the girls.
We moved to the outside part of the bar to try and escape them, but they followed, and Vanessa had to advise security about the harassment. When she went there we all thought she was following the guy to deck him, so were relieved when it was just too alert security.
There was a giant white spider on the wall which terry identified as a daddy long legs, but I'm not convinced that he was right.
I walked back to the hostel with Manon and Vanessa, we were all staying at the YHA, and i discovered that my door key didn't work, so i had to wake up my roommates to get in.