Wednesday 20th June 2018
I forgot to tell you that DB was happy we had the explore day as it was heaps more interesting than the walk in – Livistona Palms, narrow gorges, cliff climbs, water obstacles and a real adventure hike. He did say one thing though, he is worried what we will need to do for excitement once we can’t do this stuff anymore, he is hoping we won’t need to take drugs. I think we will just go on helicopters, do Horizontal Falls, dive in shark cages, etc. Also, we were quite surprised there was a total of 5 people we know of in the top end of the gorge. A couple of single tents at the mid junction just passed our campsite and a lone girl we saw on the way back from yesterdays explore trek. She was heading in on her own for 2 night. Much braver than me, I always have my guardian angel with me. And the older couple we saw at the end of yesterday who camped about 2 km back towards the start, at a spot called the Elbow.

Well, to say I had a bad nights sleep is an understatement. DB was breathing heavily like a baby.. I slept from 8ish to 9.30, then 10ish to 11, then maybe another hour after that, then I was awake until 5.30am. I finally got comfy and was in a relaxed state at about 2.30pm but do you think I could go to sleep. You would think it would be easy as we have walked so much in the last few days. 44km in the last three days with 16km to go today. Oh well. It has to be done on about 4 hours sleep. Yay!!

We got up early and packed up. Love the new tent, love my new mattress (even though I got no sleep, it was comfy, but weighs too much). Need a lighter weight sleeping bag or top cover light sheet. Always something new we need to buy every time we go on an adventure.

Anyway, we know we don’t need as much water on the way back, so instead of 5 litres each we only carried 1.6 litres and we left by 8.30am instead of 10.30am, so hopefully that helps. We are also minus a couple of kg of food each so that should make it an easier trek than on the way in. I am hoping so, as I really suffered on the way in and would like to spend more time enjoying the view instead of trudging along looking at my feet. Off we go, as it turned out it was a lot easier with the lighter pack, my improved co-ordination with my hiking poles and maybe just knowing where to go, even though it still looks different from the opposite direction and sometimes harder to find the way. We met some more people along the way and each time we stopped I removed my pack and made sure I had a whole body rest. Lesson learned on day 1. The trip out was much easier and I really enjoyed the view this time. All in all a marvellous experience.

David’s summary of the trip was that unless you did the explore day in the middle, you can really see all you need to see in the first couple of kilometres. It is a little the same for the next 8km, so I am glad I convinced him to do the explore day as that was the icing on the cake of an awesome experience and made day one of trudging worthwhile.

The young girl we met on the track today gave us some info on the Larapinta trail and inspired us to keep that on our itinerary on the way home. That was one of the only things we had on the itinerary when we left home besides competing at Aussies. So we hope to manage that next week and a quick trip to Uluru. Fingers crossed we manage all that.