Day 176 (Wednesday 04/05) - Adventure Tours Day 3

First of all, I wish you a happy Star Wars Day !
"May the fourth be with you !"
;-)

Wake up at 7:30am.
We leave at 8:30am after breakfast, shower, etc.

Our first stop today is in Port Agusta.
The town in itself isn't interesting, except that it's one of the main crossroads of Australia : going East leads to Canberra and Sydney, South (from where we're coming) to Adelaide then Melbourne, West to Perth, and North (where we're heading) to Alice Springs then Darwin.

The road we take is the Stuart Hwy, which is apparently the longest road in Australia.

After a while, we stop at Woomera for lunch.

It's a small village in the middle of nowhere, which has only recently been opened to the public.
It used to be a testing area for military weapons of the Australian, US and UK armies ...
Everywhere in the village there're some military references such as flags, planes, missiles, etc.

Now it's used as a satellite tracking site.

We stop in a small park/animal reserve (where there's no animals left appart from a few birds ...) for lunch.
We're having sandwiches.

The next stop is at Lake Hart, a salt lake, remains of an ancien inland sea.
To get there there's a short walk. The sun is really hot, and there are tons of flies, getting everywhere they can (face, mouth, eyes, ears, nose, etc.), it's really really annoying !
Once on the lake, there are a bit less flies.
Luke tells us not to go too far, as there are probably stil some landmines in the lake ... Very reassuring ...

After a while there (and some stupid photos - not with my camera, so I don't have them yet), we leave.

The next stop is in Glendambo for fuel and toilet.

We then hit the road again for a 3.5 hours drive to Coober Pedy, the opal capital of the world.

Coober Pedy is a really particular place : most of the buildings are underground !
(it's too hot during the day and cold during the night to live in normal houses, so everything is underground, where the temperature is a constant 22°C)
We're thus staying in an underground house, which is only made up of a few rooms. It's really special.

For dinner we're going to the nearby pizzeria, which has apparently been elected best pizzeria of Australia (which I doubt, as they were good, but not that good).

After that some of us go to the nextdoor bar, the Desert Cave (Luke, Byron, Kade, Liz, Tom, the 2 Flemish girls and me).
There we have a chat around a beer, and play cards.

We go quite early to bed.