Alice Springs, with friends

And now we have come to part one of my time in Alice Springs!

We got into town somewhere in the neighborhood of 5:30pm. We made plans to all get together for dinner along with the other Heading Bush group at 8. We checked into our hostel and showered up and tried to get back to normal. Most of us were staying at a place called Toddy’s where we got to share one room together with a bathroom. The Swiss German crew decided to abandon us for the cushy YHA!

We all met up for fish and chips and camel steak and Chinese food (depending on what you ordered) and of course beer. Lots of beer! We only had a few days left with everyone so we wanted to party like we meant it!

Here we are at dinner, all cleaned up and pretty:

From left to right above it is Adrian, Sandra (my yodel instructor) and Pat.

Penny and Matt

And last but not least, Sarah D, Sarah R, and Gus!

I do have more pictures of me, Christine, and Dave (the three missing) below, so don’t you worry your pretty little heads!

After we were good and full of food and beer we went to a bar/club called Bojangles (every time I hear ‘bojangles’ all I hear is Homer Simpson singing the ‘Mr. Bojangles’ song in my head. If you are a Simpsons fan you know what I’m talking about).

There was plenty of dancing going on! Later I learned out that this particular club has a website that has a live stream of the action in live time! If I was psychic I would have let you know so you could have watched me get my party on!

Here are some pictures taken at Bojangles. The one in the pink hat is Helen:

Here are Adrian and Sandra again:

And Canadian Dave, cutting loose!

One of the most interesting things about Bojangles was the bathroom. They played tricks on people in the bathroom. For  most people in the club, by the time they are using the bathroom they are already fairly well buzzed. It is hilarious watching people in there try to figure things out. The first prank they pull is to put the door handle on the opposite side that the door opens. You will see people in front of the door, alternately pushing and pulling the handle for a few seconds before they can figure it out. The next prank – each of the water faucet handles actually turned on the faucet in the sink next to the one you were at! See the below picture – Christine is trying to turn on the water, but when she tried turning on the sink she is standing in front of, the water in the sink to the LEFT of her turned on:

And lastly, the toilet seats were all clear with little fish or something swimming in the lids. It was a crazy, crazy place.

But that’s enough about the bathroom! Here are more dancing pictures

Here I am with the posse!

Anyhow, I’m sure you don’t want to hear about how we just danced all night long and then went to the bar next door for the official ‘Heading Bush’ Jagermeister shots and watched a crazy girl dance like a mad woman before we came back to Bojangles, so I’ll just say that we stayed out as late as the bar was open (1:30am! They don’t know how to party in Alice!) and walked home, happy as can be.

The next morning we met up for brunch at 12 and spent a little time going our separate ways to check out the town and the dijaridu store. I was considering getting myself a dijaridu because this place sent them home for you so you didn’t have to carry it around Australia, but I decided against it. Despite the convenience, they were still way too expensive. We met up again for dinner at the same place we were at last night (the dinner place, not Bojangles) for a farewell dinner for Penny. She would be the first of our group one to go.

After dinner, we walked Penny to the bus stop where Sarah D. made friends with this crazy fellah named Joshua who was also getting on the bus. He seemed to be quite a bit drunk, and was definitely quite a bit loud. And poor Penny. When her bus was leaving, saw through the window that he decided to bypass all the empty seats and sit down right next to her… for her entire 17 hour bus ride.

That was goodbye number one, but there were so many more to come before the end of Alice Springs.

The remaining crew went out to a local bar that was not quite as wild as Bojangles was. We just wanted a place to chill out and talk and relax. that night. Here are three of the guys:

Dave and Sarah in a rousing thumb wrestling match that had me caught in the middle:

This ended up being a pretty early night. We were all still worn out from the 10 days in the bush and from Bojangles, so after One or Two drinks we went back to the hostel and said our goodbyes to Matt who would be leaving early tomorrow.

The next morning the remaining of us met up again for breakfast. Here is where I made my first major (but not too major) purchase. I bought a mini-laptop to make my life easier for the next month of blog posts. It was fairly inexpensive for what it was, and it is so nice to be able to write out my blogs and choose the pictures before having to go online and post it on blogspot. The money I am saving on internet makes it well worth it! Plus, the computer has a webcam built into it, and it has a couple of awesome pieces of pre-installed software like an astronomy program that tells you the positions of all the stars, and a chemistry program that can teach me the periodic table of elements during my down times. Who knows when I might need that! In addition to all of that, now when I find places that offer free wireless internet (i.e. Starbucks) I can do all my surfing for FREE (with purchase of coffee).

With my new computer in hand, now I went to meet the crew for breakfast. After we ate, there were a few more goodbyes. The rest of the Swiss Germans (Pat, Adrian, Sandra) were now leaving. All that was left in Alice Springs were the Sarahs, Dave, and me. Dave would be leaving early the next morning so we decided to hang out with him that night at the posh hotel room he rented. Dave couldn’t stand staying in hostels for too long. We had pizza (which was terrible) and watched music videos until around 9 before we said goodbye to Dave.

The next morning at 6:30am, we were woken up for another goodbye. Sarah D. was leaving to go back to Adelaide, and now it was her time to go.

All that was left from my group now was just Sarah R. and myself, and Helen from the other group. This would also be Sarah R’s last day in Alice before she was leaving. We decided to keep the day low-key and just hang out around town.

First, we went to the reptile museum and we all held a huge snake:

In the museum they also had a lonely crocodile they had in a tank outside. It looked pretty sad. It was in a small enclosure and it was all by itself. I don’t know if crocodiles do get lonely for other crocodiles, but I imagine it would get depressed living in such a small enclosure. I didn’t want to take pictures of it, it seemed too small and unhappy. But here is Neville, the Thorny Devil!

After we finished at the museum, Sarah and I went shopping for shoes. Her shoes pretty much died on our Outback tour, and were currently held together by duct tape, so she decided to bite the bullet and get some really cool new ones. I think the new ones were called Charcols? Something like that. But they are supposedly awesome.  They are great for hiking (much better than Birks) and if they weren’t so expensive I might have gotten myself a pair.

Here is Sarah’s sad farewell to her shoes:

After she said goodbye to her shoes we went back to Sarah’s hostel (I had checked into a new hostel called Alice’s Secret that morning, but I’ll tell you about that later) and hung out at the pool for a couple of hours. Then we had dinner and watched  Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and cried our eyes out. It’s a cheesy movie, but it’s actually a really good chick flick.

Then… the last goodbye. When I got back at my hostel that night, I was all alone in Alice Springs. That is figuratively speaking of course as there are actually a lot of people in Alice Springs.

I will tell you more about Alice Springs itself and my hostel in the next post. Until then, goodnight!