Mar 15-16: Tastes of the Outback

I decided to head up to the Flinders Ranges, an outback mountain range on the southern end of Australia. It was my first real experience with the interior... the red dirt, and the pounding heat. I spent a couple of nights in Hawker, and did a really interesting hike up through a place called Wilpena Pound. "The Pound" is a rock formation that looks a little like a mountain that was hit by a meteor - it is a ring of mountains that circle a shallow valley.

This was my first experience with Australian flies. More persistent than the ones back home, these guys will swarm around you looking for any sort of moisture. They will land on your mouth, go in your nose, even land on your eye. Over the afternoon of the hike, I managed to trap two flies accidentally: one between my ipod earbud and my ear, the other up my nose.