Emīls writes:
The morning begun very early – at 5 AM. Because we wanted to go to Henbury meteorite craters and we shouldn’t delay our teammates who stayed at hostel and should be ready at ~10 AM for leaving the city. Two boiled eggs and a yoghurt for breakfast. I had a lazanja from yesterday that I bought at Alice Spring’s supermarket, so I decided to eat it first since it was more delicious than just an ordinary egg with salt.
We are almost there at the craters. This time road is much better than before – no mud, no floods. Ilgonis is at the wheel. Just when I got out of the car I noticed we have a flat tire. Very flat. It could have been because of the gravel road which had quite big rocks on it. So the only thing we could do is change our tire with the one we had under our car. It was smaller and not fully pumped but it was the only way to get back to Alice Springs. After Ilgonis and Rūdolfs did that, we went to explore meteorite craters. They didn’t give me the impression that I was hoping for, but still it was interesting to see a place where a big rock from the space was fallen many thousand years ago. At the bottom of the craters there were trees and bushes, and water as well. Probably there are animals that come here to drink water. Just then we saw two kangaroos who were jumping away from us. I suppose we disturbed them. Later on the gravel road we saw two more kangaroos. So it’s more than in the whole trip together till now.
When we returned to Alice Springs, we went straight to the auto service. There we found out that the tire needs to be entirely replaced because the hole in it is too big. Additional expenses – 160 AUD.
Later that day we went in Tennant Creek’s direction. We decided not to go to Devils Marbles because of the approaching storm. We saw dark clouds, and in a moment it started to rain. Of course, there was also a fire in the desert as it should be traditionally – because we are looking for a place to camp. But we didn’t get alarmed, we just cooked supper – delicious pasta with bolognese sauce – and went to sleep. No stars tonight – it’s cloudy. Strange, but most of the nights we have spent in the middle of Australia’s desert were cloudy. There were only two nights till now when we were able to learn how to find southern constellations. Yet the Moon is approaching the Sun. 6 days till the total eclipse.