Pre Day - Home to Alice Springs and Hike Preparation (Larapinta)

 Saturday 19 July (Pre-day)

 This morning, we were up at 4:40am, packed and picked up by a friend at 5:15am. We all headed off to Minnippi parkrun to run together. This was a nice parkland course with a good number of runners.

https://www.parkrun.com.au/

https://www.parkrun.com.au/minnippi/

Breakfast was at the Hive Café, Carindale Leagues Club, where we enjoyed breakfast burgers. 

https://www.carinaleaguesclub.com.au/dining/

After a wash and change of clothes our friend dropped us off at the airport (thank you Catherine). We rearranged our bags to distribute the weight evenly and checked in. We were at the departure gate at 9:50am reading for 10:05am boarding.

We were on board by 10:15am and then waited. At 10:36am, after our scheduled departure time, we were advised we would need to change planes due to mechanical problems. Always happy to get off a plane the mechanics don’t think should fly.  As it was expected to take several hours to repair, a substitute plane was found. We disembarked and relocated to a different boarding gate, from which a bus drove us out to a parking area for planes which appeared to be in the middle of the airport.  The plane then drove quite some distance on the ground to the runways. At 12:20 we were off. Due to the late departure and wind conditions, we were advised we would be flying lower than usual – this gave us view of the channel country with its bright stripes of green from where rain earlier in the season had travelled down from the Gulf of Carpentaria, and also views of the rows of red sand dunes of the Simpson Desert. 

 

We arrived in Alice Springs at 3:30pm (NT time) and took a bus to our accommodation, The Diplomat Hotel, on the edge of the main town center.

https://diplomatalicesprings.com.au/

After checking in, we went shopping for food supplies for our trip and picked up Subway for dinner. On returning to the hotel, we sorted all our food supplies for the hike and packed our drop boxes ready for collection and delivery by Larapinta Trek Trail Support (LTTS). We had prebooked a E2E Duo Essentials package which covered three food drops (including containers and key to storage points), gas and our return transfers to Alice Springs at the end of our walk. A personal locator beacon was also included in the package and while we took this with us in one pack, we also had our Garmin InReach to message our emergency contact at the beginning and end of each days walk.

https://www.treksupport.com.au/larapinta-trail-e2e-trek-packages

Off to bed with the hope of a good night’s sleep, unfortunately music played nearby until 6am the next morning – ah well.