riding the ghan...adelaide to alice springs to darwin!

after our first night out we then got up early and caught the ghan which ran directly north from adelaide to alice springs and finally darwin. the ghan did not prove to be as comfortable as a train as the overland. it was definitely a bit older and the scenery although beautiful, also became a bit mundane after several hours. our lack of "train experience" also seemed to become a bit more apparent on this trip as well. to put the experience in a shell, i can remember waking up from a nap (which is pretty much the most entertaining thing you can do on a train ride that long) to carrie looking at me wide eyed saying, "I've been waiting for you to wake up, i'm bored, grumpy, and antsy. i want to get up, but there's no where to go!" there was no way to really anticipate the amount of time we would be spending on the ghan in our future, but there was definitely a realization that we needed to be much better prepared. after about 24 hours on the ghan, we finally reached a small town in the very center of australia called alice springs.

once we arrived in alice we only had a few hours to stretch our legs and relax before the last leg of our trip to darwin. so we walked around town, and bought a few more snacks. in alice there were a lot of big cliffs, barefoot aboriginal people, and red dust, which caused some sort of allergic reaction in carrie's feet making them swell to the size of small balloons. the city of alice isn't known for very much except for being centrally located in australia and surrounded by a whole lot of nothingness. they do have a dry river (which a lot of australian towns still call rivers) boat race, where people actually run fred flinstone style down the river bed with boat in hand, camels, which were introduced from the far east and have been able to survive in the wild and on farms. finally we boarded the train again to complete our final leg of the journey to darwin. half way to darwin we stopped off in a small town called katherine. katherine has a small town tour which is basically a bus ride into town, or a gorge that you can tour through or walk along the top of, carrie and i on the other hand trying to be frugal travelers decided to try to exploring on our own to save a few dollars and completed book balancing contests and a last minute foot race displayed before a fully boarded train (yes, we were late--but still racing along the side of the train) before heading to darwin.