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Other entries in Coober Pedy

It's an underground city -- NOT!!!!

Lol so I have to admit that my excitement for reaching Coober Pedy was DEFINITELY thwarted, lol, by the fact that it wasn't an underground city at ALL!  I guess I expected it to just look like nothing on top and then be this neat underground world, lol, but that wasn't it at all!  We stopped at an opal mining area on the way in to search for opals (didn't find any, imagine my surprise lol) and then drove in to see that "underground" actually means "houses in the sides of mounds of hard packed red dirt" lol.  Mike stopped to refuel and told us we had 15 minutes to explore so Tara and I went out to buy opals (since it didn't look like we'd get a chance later on and it was already 5pm--in Australian time technically the shops should have already been closed lol).  We found this hialriously dodgy place and both bought stuff, beautiful gems!!!  Amazing how one stone can be so many millions of different colours/colour combinations.  I bought a beautiful bracelet and Tara bought some earrings/necklace for her mom.  We realized we were going to be late getting back to the bus when Tara's receipt wouldn't print out, lol, and our poor sales person tried, with little success, to fix it.  He didn't speak much English, lol, but he was the nicest guy ever!  Anyway we finally got it reprinted and took off to find the bus driving past, lol, but luckily it stopped for us.  Then we get on and GET THIS - we get SCOLDED!!!!  LOL!!!  What a nut, Mike starts going on about how we're going to miss the mine tour now because of us and blah blah blah...I couldn't believe it!  Every time we stopped we waited an extra five minutes for people to have their stupid smoke breaks (ohhh god our whole tour bus nearly smoked, talk about DISGUSTING!!!) and he's giving us crap for being ten minutes late by accident?!  Jeez, lol, what a riot!

Anyway we went for our mine tour and obviously got in, lol.  It started with a HILARIOUSLY cheesy video on how Coober Pedy is the greatest opal mining town in the world, lol, and then we went on a guided tour through the mine.  Kind of neat but lead by a girl who was speaking SO SLOWLY I think she might have spent too much time underground!  I definitely would never want to live in a place like that, the place was so dusty and dingy (though she tried to tell us that apparently it's better for dust than houses above ground groan).  Anyhoo after that we headed to our bunker to put our stuff in and I was in an area (it definitely wasn't a room -- it was two bunk beds and a curtain, lol) with Claire, Tara and Amy (our tour guide in training).

Off to dinner!  We went to John's Pizza place where we had mediocre pizza for $9!!!!  BLAH!  LOL!  Tried another Aussie pizza - this time with bacon as well as egg on it haha!  Not so good that one, I definitely preferred the one I had in the Docklands in Melbourne.  Tara and I were constantly talking about how great Melbourne was, lol!!  Actually we chatted quite a bit, she was a super nice girl whose best friend had just been killed last week in a car crash at home.  Boo!  But yeah, I also tried Cooper's (more Aussie beer) and decided I never needed another beer in my lifetime!  Gross!

We went to the "underground" bar (it wasn't really underground at all, lol, just like the other places!!!) which was REALLY terrible, lol!  They weren't even playing music since you had to pay for it.  EESH!  Everything here is seriously so overpriced I could just cry every time I have to pay for something!  Anyhoo then we headed back to the bunkers for bed, lol.  It was actually surprisingly warm!

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