Is that a damp patch?

On the advice of yesterdays host for morning tea, we headed to Kungkas Can Cook for breakfast, a bush food supplier that also runs a cafe.  Here you can purchase all sorts, for Katie, it was a Cappucino with bush figs on ricotta and ciabatta toast with a wattle honey drizzle. I had a flat white with my meal being ciabatta bread toasted with avocado and rocket on top, sprinkled over this was some bush collected dukkha (i also opted for a couple of poached eggs on the side too!).

The meals were lovely and there were more flavours in them than we can even describe let alone remember.

From here we had a little dilemma, feeling a little fatigued from the long days already and a bag full of washing we needed to make a decision, to venture out for more exploring, stay in camp to get ready for pack up or head back into town for more Aboriginal arts.

The winner was all of the above, we will do a little exploring, spend a little in the city and do a little housework.

A roadside Minion

Our first stop was about 45kms from Alice Springs, Standley Chasm.  Many will have heard of it and also visited, however, one thing no one told us was there is an admission fee of $12 per adult to partake.
After paying the fee we took the short walk to see the geological marvel.

It takes about 30 minutes to do the return walk from the visitor information center to the chasm and when we got there we were instantly overcome by a busload of tourists. At first, I thought this would ruin it all but to our surprise they were gone before we noticed. It is surprising to me how some people (and tour operators) travel all this distance, walk a kilometer or more, to then only spend about 4 minutes at each actual site they spent so much time, effort and money getting too.

For us, we spent about 30 minutes there some time with just each other, other times with groups that would come and go. Standley Chasm is an amazing place.

From hear the rain started, yes it rained, and we headed to the Alice Springs Reptile Centre.  The amount of reptiles in this small house is amazing and I believe almost all of the deadly Australian snakes were on show.  Snakes don't really scare us, as long as they are behind glass, but what we wanted to see were the lizards and geckos. The little guys are very cute.  There we found, however, a smaller collection of lizards than snakes.  Over all, it was a good experienance, however, the Alice Springs Desert Park with its nocturnal sections does cover it much better.

The rain got heavier as the afternoon passed by but we needed to perform some dreaded laundry. We used the washing machine at the campground but our clothes were not going to dry out on the clothesline. We had to then do the short drive into town and use the laundromat dryers. But the time passed quickly as we watched some local Aboriginal kids play in the rain and puddles. I guess it doesn't rain here often.

Thankfully for us, there were no damp patches in the tent and all the moisture was kept to the outside.

Short video of us, the tent and the rain.