Drive: 143km; Total towed: 4762km
2-25 deg C
It was a tad fresh again this morning but we both got out and about for our walks with breakfast following. We then packed up and were back on the red dusty road a little after 9am. We stopped for mornos at the Tropic of Capricorn roadside stop and realised the night time/early morning temperatures are only going to get chillier from hereon-in. Not to worry, no such thing as horrible weather, just poor choice of clothing - apparently??!!
We didn't stop again until we reached our new home for the next five nights - BIG4 MacDonnell Range Holiday Park at Alice Springs. On approach to the park, we saw all these vans lined up and thought "oh we are so glad we've booked" as we thought these were all the people waiting for a possible vacancy. How wrong we were?! It took at least 45 minutes to get to the front of the queue as not only were they checking-in, they were also asking for miracles "we only booked for one night but want to extend to three. Sorry no vacancy. Can you please check again, or can we please go to your overflow site?" And on, and on, and on it went. There were three computer terminals but only 1.5 checker-inerers - crazy system. And then, once they've checked you in, they disappear to tell a man on a scooter who guides you to your site and assists you in parking, all with no questions about whether or not you need it. If you can't read a park map you probably shouldn't be holidaying in a van park! We weren’t told this, so we just took off and went the opposite way to what they told us because that is the way it is best to park your van. The guy that was 'looking after us' gave us the evil eye and asked where we were going. And then we backed in about 50cm too far back and were told that we cannot cross this imaginary line, so Greg went forwards a tad to please the man. Oh, and then he proceeded to tell us where all the amenities were because we couldn't already see them on the map. Finally, we got to set up our house and have lunch.
We then hopped straight onto the bikes and rode into the city to 1. orientate ourselves and 2. find the tourist info centre to get a cycle path map. After obtaining the maps, we wandered through the Todd mall for a while looking at various Aboriginal Art Galleries; Greg found an original that he really liked but at $2.5k Wendy thought it could probably find a much better home than ours!
