The Outback - Day Three

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

Another 4am start for us so that we could do our King's Canyon rim walk in the relative cool of the early morning. We arrived at the canyon just as the sun was rising, it was beautiful. We realised the kinds of colours that we would have seen if the sun had been on Uluru while we were there!
The first part of the 3 1/2 hour walk was a quite steep climb but once at the top of the canyon it was pretty flat. The views were amazing.

Half way round the walk we went down into the 'Garden of Eden' where there is a water hole. Quite a lot of people went for a swim, and everyone used it as a place to cool off in the shade and reenergise with a biscuit or two.
Once we left the waterhole we walked up on to the rim where the sun blazed down on us. Our group was being quite slow so Chris and I went ahead a bit with a few others to avoid being in the sun for too long.
The top of the canyon was covered in domes which the Anangu people believe are the remains of hunters who found the abundently fertile valley and proceeded to eat all of the food. They became so fat that they couldn't move and the people who they were collecting food for died. So share your food or else!

Reaching the end of the walk at about 9:45am the temperature had risen to around 37 degrees and we were a bit hot. We returned to our camp for lunch and then spent the next 6 or so hours driving back to Alice Springs.

We enjoyed our trip a lot. Uluru is very cool, but we loved the King's Canyon, it was beautiful. We did get very hot though and the flies were extremely pesky! We are pleased that we survived being in the outback without being got by any critters, getting suburned, dehydrated, or lost.

Off to Melbourne tomorrow.