You Can Add ‘Slept Underground’ To Yr Bucketlist Thanks To This Aussie Hotel

There are many reasons people pick a hotel. Maybe it’s based on price, or proximity to the centre of the action, or luxury, or a pool. But sometimes, just some glorious times, it’s because the hotel itself is actually the experience you travel for. That’s true of Sweden’s Ice Hotel, and it’s true of Australia’s underground Comfort Inn Coober Pedy Experience Motel.

Yes, I said underground.

Coober Pedy itself is a pretty odd town. It’s famous for opal mining but mostly for the fact that most of the town has been built underground. That’s underground houses, cafes, churches, and of course hotels. Why? Because it’s smack bang in the Aussie outback and therefore bloody hot. This is one of those super unique things you can’t experience anywhere else.

Choice Hotel‘s 2018 Hotel Of The Year, Comfort InnCoober Pedy Experience Motel gets you right in amongst it. The hotel was built in 1990 inside an old mine that was in action for about 50 years in the 1900s. That, mates, is history. But obviously, you’re not going to stay inside the hotel the whole time, even if it is super cool and they somehow manage to provide fwi-fi and TV even though my very normal above ground home in Sydney is often on the fritz. That’s FINE.

Besides opal shopping, because when in Rome, there’s a bunch of things to check out around town. You can take a 4WD tour to the 80 million-year-old Painted Desert, carved out in the bedrock of an extinct inland sea and made famous by the moon-like landscape and red, orange, and yellow hills. Also thanks to movies like Mad Max III and Red Planet who used it as a set.

Hit up the Umoona Opal Mine and Museum, the largest underground attraction in town, to educate yourself on the history of Aboriginal and European settlement in the area, as well as checking out fossils left over from that same inland sea.

You can also hunt for your own dang gemstones. Head over to the Visitor’s Centre for a map of places in the area that allow you to do that, or ‘noodle’ as the locals call it.

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