Uluru

After my morning at Kings Canyon, I finished up and cranked up the AC and headed out to Uluru. You might think that I was bored while driving all of this way by myself but I saw a ton. There are tons of wild cattle that roam, wild horses here and there and the occasional hawk scouting for food. I had done a bunch of research on this drive and one of the things mentioned to see was O’conner Mountain. This is sometimes assumed as being Ayers Rock (Uluru) on the ride out because it is a HUGE mountain/rock that just sits in the middle of nowhere. But unlike Uluru it is plateau and not rounded, and I have no idea if you can get to it. If you can, my guess is that you need a 4 wheel drive vehicle because there are no signs posting about roads, just views. At the rest area where you view Mt. O’Conner, there is a huge red sand dune across the street. If you didn’t do research like I did, or know someone who knew the topography of the land, you would have no idea there is a HUGE SALT LAKE on the other side. It is fairly far out in the distance from the top of the sand dune, but you could easily walk to it if you wanted to I am sure. Definitely worth the stop and short climb up the dune to check it out.

Back on the road, I finally made it to Uluru, it was around 2:30pm at the time. There wasn't many people around which was nice, but the damn flies were out with vengence, thank god for the geeky head net hahaha. I was in total awe of this massive rock. People kept telling me, “this is a desert, and a huge rock just out in the middle of nowhere” well yes I know that but it was not what I was expecting. It isn’t desert sand as far as the eye can see (whcih is what I thought it would be), there are tons of different kinds of trees and grass and rock all over the place to make it interesting. And yes it is a massive rock in the middle of nowhere but that is what makes it even that much more amazing. They have a few walks that you can do at Uluru, and I decided to do the base walk which was 10.5K (6.5 miles). Ok so it was a really LONG walk, and I felt like I was making good time going around this massive structure, each time I was checking something out on the rock, I figured I was passing it, but not really. It just kept seeming to follow me no matter what, it was really bizarre. Along the walk there were places to stop and read about the rock and what it meant to the Aboriginal people. If I could remember exactly what it was about I would tell you, but I am unfortunately a few days late in putting this blog up.

Head net due to the flies

Uluru with Rainbow

Cave Painting

More Cave Paintings

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Reminds me of the singing bush lol

Skull

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Crazy Clouds

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All the flies.....yuck

After the LONG and kind of boring walk the trick was to figure out where I was going to spend the night. The hotels there are so expensive I wasn’t about to shell out $400 USD for one night lol. As I was leaving the park, I saw the signs for the resorts but also for a campground. Wahooooo!!! OK so those are kind of expensive $36 AUD for a non-powered site, but at least it was close (because I was going back to the park tomorrow) and it had a shower and people lol. I was setting up my tent in a little area when a random woman came up and asked if I was going to go see the sunset at Uluru. I told her I had just come from there, and the weather was crappy so probably not. She said that it looked like it was clearing up. I said well if I change my mind I will let you know. So after getting all set up, I still had time so I went looking for the girl and her friend to see if they wanted to go with me. I found them and away we went. We started talking about who we were and what we had been doing. Espen is from Norway and Anais (said like A nah eese) is from Amsterdam. These two were really cool. We got to talking about how they had spent their day at Kata Juta doing some walks, and I had done the base walk at Uluru. They were going to do Uluru tomorrow and I was heading to Kata Juta so we swapped information.

Come to find out, they were trying to get to Alice Springs after being out here and were going to hitch hike. I thought that was nuts, but I get trying to save money. I told them since I was heading to the park again tomorrow if they wanted a ride there I would drop them off. I also told them they were more than welcome to ride back to Alice Springs with me, but I would probably camp somewhere in between to break up the driving. I told them to think about it, I was heading to dinner and they could tell me later on. The two of them decided to jump on my offer on the ride to Alice Springs, but they said that they didn’t want to mess up any of my plans. I told them I don’t really have any plans except that I need to be in A.S. by Saturday because I have a flight Sunday morning. It felt good knowing that I was helping someone get to where they needed to be with a safe stranger lol and not some lunatic. ;) We parted ways for the evening and decided that after each of our walks we would just meet back at the campground and be on the road around 3.

Until my next blog…Noodle.