We woke up just before sunrise, but the sky was mostly cloud covered, and you could just barely see the sun peeking through the clouds. The original plan was to eat breakfast at the bush campsite, and Adam would be making bacon and eggs as a special treat for our last morning. But even he was fed up with the flies, so we just quickly packed the bus and headed back to the Ayers Rock Resort campsite to make breakfast there. While Team Snake made breakfast, I took a shower and rearranged all my belongings in preparation for my flight later that day.

After breakfast, we were dropped off at the Desert Garden hotel in the resort, since it would be too early to go to the airport then, and we could just stowaway on the free shuttle bus operated by the resort (the resort also operates the airport, so they don't really mind). We had a little bit of time to wander around the plaza again and visit the shops one last time (and eat one more Golden Gaytime with my new friends). Everyone on the trip except me was on the 12:50pm Jetstar flight Sydney - I had booked the 12:20pm Qantas flight because when I was booking flights back in October they were almost the same price. The shuttle departs 2 hours before the flight, so I had to be back at the hotel lobby at 10:20am to get on board and head to the airport.

The airport was a mess: there were only 2 people operating the check-in desk for Qantas, but one was taking care of a huge pile of unattended bags belonging to some group, which left only one person to attend to a long line of people who all had bags to check (including a large tour group from Texas). By the time I got near the front of the line, the rest of my tour group had made it to the airport for their flight that was scheduled for a half-hour later. On the bright side, I was able to hang out with them in the terminal while we waited for our flights to board. They were also showing the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl on TV, and you could tell who was American by who was watching. The Germans asked me for a bit of analysis because they didn't really understand what was going on. Then, for no explainable reason, the Qantas flight was delayed, so actually the Jetstar flight boarded and departed before our flight even got to board!

Around 1:30pm I was finally on board the plane to Sydney. I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast because the food in the airport was so ridiculously expensive, so I was really hungry on the plane, luckily Qantas actually serves hot food in economy even on short-haul flights. They served chicken croquettes, and after everyone who wanted food had received it, they walked back down the aisle with all the leftovers and handed it out to whoever was interested. I was able to get a second portion.

Aside from eating, I was also able to take a brief nap on the flight, and next thing I knew we were landing in Sydney. I collected my bags and walked down to the train station. The Sydney airport is conveniently only a ten minute train ride from Central Station in the Sydney CBD, and trains come pretty frequently. Also, Apple Pay is accepted on all the public transportation in Sydney, and it will automatically impose daily and weekly caps at the price of the unlimited ride passes for those time periods, which was really helpful.

From Sydney Central Station it was only a few minutes walk to Big Hostel where I would be spending the next four nights. I was able to check in and drop off my bags before heading out in search of food. A couple blocks from the hostel is Sydney's Chinatown where there were lots of affordable restaurants, but one that caught my eye was Pepper Lunch, which is a Japanese casual chain that serves teppanyaki plates, that I'd had once before in Hong Kong with Will, Dylan, and Andrew. I decided to go there just for the nostalgia factor, and the large serving of beef and rice topped with egg, corn, and cheese really hit the spot.