Bye bye laptop, hello Alice Springs

Ok, first the very sad news: my laptop was crushed to death during the Adelaide to Alice tour... and I do not have insurance for my baggage (of course the Dell insurance ended in January as well, when it reached the mature age of 1 year) so I have to cough up a lot of money to get a new one when I get back home :'( Since a lot of my pictures etc (basically my life) is on the harddrive of the laptop I hope I can get the info of that one still (fingers crossed that that is possible). Apart from this it was a great trip!
Adelaide was boring as usual and after such an active week in Canberra I decided to take it slow. The first day was spent mainly behind the laptop watching series and a quick supermarket run. The next day I felt I should really drag myself out of the hostel into the sunshine, so I went to the museum. Unfortunately the museum tiredness was still there so after an hour of just strolling along the exhibits (they have an awesome stuffed animal collection) I had enough cultural baggage for the rest of the day and headed home :-)
Saturday morning the fun was to begin: pick up at 6 am by Juno, our driver/tourguide for the next 7 days. Everybody was ready in time for their pick up (surprisingly) and we headed to the office for the necessary 'sign your life away' paperwork. On the way there a Dutch family on our tour got sad news: their dad/granddad had just passed away so they had to go home asap. We dropped them off at the busstation and headed towards our home for the next 2 nights 'The Mill' in Quorn. The morning was thus basically spent driving there, then lunch at the Mill and the afternoon we hiked up Devils Peak. A pretty steep hike, but such a reward at the top: the view was amazing! Good to get some excercise as well, especially after my overdose on Timtams and Cadbury chocolate here the last few months....Time to spot some rare Yellow Foot Wallabies in Warren Gorge (we saw loads, just one blurry picture as a result ahum). We had kangaroo, emu and camel for dinner :-) Welcome on the Adventure Tour! We could sleep in the next day till 7.30 and after a good breakfast headed to the Flinders Ranges for another lovely hike, this time a bit less steep (but longer), up Mount Ohlssen Bagge (923m). On the way there we stopped at the ruins of Kanyaka homestead, an old farming station where 80 people were stationed at one time (very cramped I'd say). We also spotted our first wild Emus along the way : D and the Yourambulla Caves showed us the first Aboriginal Rock Art, very nice! The hike after that was very very nice and a well earned bbq lunch was devoured while the emus there were checking us out (which resulted in great pictures). Back to the Mill for a chilled out evening. The next morning it was time to head to Coober Pedy!!! Mainly a driving day, with a stop along the salt lake. That was also the day my laptop was crushed to death (very very sad morning). Coober Pedy is awesome! Many weird people who have adapted to living in this extremely harsh environment in a unique way: living underground. Obviously we slept underground in a hostel, checked out the local kangaroo care centre (where they look after orphaned baby kangaroos and release them back in the wild after they're big enough) had pizza at the local pub and went to the underground pub with the only underground Pokies in the world. I played some pool with Juno (our tourguide) and James (Canadian, son of team Canada: Jo-Anne and Peter, brother of Emily). I lost both times of course, but especially the first game against Juno was not too bad :-)
The next morning we had a tour in an opal mine and then cruised around town and noodled for opal ourselves in a huge pile of dirt. None of us (8 people, team Canada, an older couple from Melbourne: Dave and Christine, a Korean guy called Lucas (not his real name obviously) and me) found anything worth talking about. In the afternoon we cruised to our next destination while checking out the longest fence in the world: the Dog fence (to keep the dingos out of the south/sheep country), once 9600km, now about half of that. Also checked out the Breakaways (mountain ranges) after which we arrived at Yalara, our campsite for the night. We hiked the Valey of the Winds (about 2/3) at Kata Tjuta and watched sunset at Uluru while drinking champagne from plastic cups :) More news later (have to go now)!