We had planned to take an early morning hot air balloon ride over the Central Australian desert today but unfortunately the wind was too strong and so the flight was cancelled. So instead we had a lie in (as we don’t get many of those on this holiday!) and spent the rest of the day by the pool. Our hotel is a recent addition to the Alice Springs landscape and has at its heart the town’s only casino. So it tends to attract a lot of local people as well as tourists. We had a play on the slot machines which only cost 2 cents a go and so for two dollars (£1) you can have 100 games! There were a lot of aborigine people on the slot machines I noticed –our guide explained how many aborigines have only come face to face with western culture in the last 50 years and therefore things such as gambling and drinking and drugs have become adopted vices for many.
Tonight we took a nocturnal tour at the Alice Springs Desert Park, to see some of Australia’s endangered species that are only active at night. There is a section of the park that is only visited at night and one of the special little marsupials that we saw tonight was the Mala. This is now extinct in the wild and the park only has 7 in captivity. Tonight we witnessed 2 of them mating!! The guides said that they had never seen this before and they were thrilled. We only had a few red lights to see our way around the park but we saw some beautiful little creatures including a Bilby (long snout, big ears and with a body totally out of proportion!) and several Burrowing and Brush Betons. It was a wonderful evening and only 4 of us on the tour – with 2 guides!
No comments:
Post a Comment