The Monkey's Cheese!

Tuesday, April 13

Hey! Im at a shitty internet terminal in an awesome resort! And im at Ayers rock!!! ,The trip up sucked, but it was cool in its own way, actually we got a ride with a truckie from Adelaide to Cobber Peddy and that was great, it's illegal for truckies to pick up hitchers because of insurance but he owns the truck company and was looking out for us, his name was Roger and he was our angel. He was nice enough to take us to all the vistas, it was very nice of him, his truck had a bed in it and everything. Cobber Peddy is a barren town with lots of rocks, and the houses are underground, theres heaps of homeless dogs and Aboriginals which is really sad, Rachel gave on a dollar and he started following us with his group for ages, they werent violent but it was not something we wanted so we had to go hide. Rachel was warned not to give them money from Roger but she couldnt help it. The town seemed sad to me, and the strange jetplanes dousing the people with chemicals three times a day made me uncomfortable and eager to leave, unfortunately we didnt get to enter any underground houses, but I picked up a nice rock with opal from a store which I want to turn into a necklace one day.

Everything is Opals. Every second shop is an opal store, we got there in time for the opal festival too which was lucky, there was a parade and a big festival, and they had sausage throwing competitions and um.. all sorts of other crap, as well as a crap cover band and I met three german girls too, they asked me for weed and I said I didnt have any, and then we were all sad.

After a few days we got out and sat by the side of a road for 3 hours waiting to hitch up to Alice Springs, the problem is that we had no shade and limited water (all the water up here is stagnant, you gotta buy it and its more expensive than coke), just when we were convinced we were going to die and the eagles were going to eat us, a pair of guys towing a car up offered us a ride for $50 each, which was worth it. We were worried we'd never get a ride, especially with Ben and his 'Terminator' hitching stance which was more likely to scare off potential rides than anything! The guys took us up to Erldudna like 600 ks away, probably more, Ben wanted to go straight to Alice but Rachel and I were not gonna pass through without going to Ayers Rock, Erldunda was the turnoff point so we decided to stay there for the night.. bad idea.

Erldudna was shit!! thousands of flies, horrible heat.. we stayed at a nightmare motel, full of cockroaches, spiders and this freaky guy who was the groundskeeper and talked to the roaches, the manager hated us and tried to lock us out.. our door was the only one with UFO poster on it, we were the only ones staying there, the showers were broken and the water was brown, there was country and western music pumping out throughout the halls, and it night, because of the electromanticity of the area, when we lifted our bedsheets green sparks would come flying out! It was honestly like a Scooby Doo episode, when I lost Rachel and Ben for a while I literally feared for their life. I thought the groundskeeper and his roaches had eaten them.

Hitching out of there was hard!! We had no money and no ride, eventually Rachel pulled a sob story on the bus driver of on an aboriginal community bus! It was odd to say the least, to be the only white people in a bus full of Aboriginals, we certainly felt like a minority but it was a good experience, it was funny when the bus stopped and the 'whites' had to get out. The aboriginals smiled, some of the kids were so cute, the ride was nice except for the horrible heat which never let up.

Now we are finally here at Uluru/Ayers rock and its awesome!! Its a big fancy resort! So we can drink the water from the taps! The rock is HUGE.. but im running out of time and Rachel is waiting at the pub with a jug so I better go before its gone!!