Kata Juta

I got up around 8am today (I had wanted to see the sun rise but when my alarm went off I was too lazy to move lol) and got myself ready for the day. I saw Anais and Espen and we all piled in the car for the day’s activities. I dropped the two of them off at Uluru and we agreed to meet back at the campground and be on the road for 3pm.

Kata Juta is about a 25 min drive from the Uluru area, farther out to the west. It is a very large set of multiple rocks that has a gorge in it and a walk around and up to lookouts. I decided yet again to take the walk “around” this massive rock and didn’t regret it one bit. The walk actually will “close” when the temperature gets too hot and becomes unsafe for hikers, so I wanted to make sure I got there early enough. The walk started going uphill, and then quickly went down and a lot of this was over very loose rocks so needless to say it was a slow start. Again, there wasn’t really anyone around so I had to make sure I didn’t injure myself at all. This walk was different than going around Uluru. There were bigger trees around and much more grass and it was made up of multiple large rocks. It was a nice change of scenery.

Zebra Finches

After this long walk, I headed back to the resort to meet up with Espen and Anais to get the rest of our day going. When I got there we all decided to stay at the camping area and snag some sunshine and pool time before heading out on the road, it is a great idea minus the damn flies lol. We got on the road around 5pm and decided to just drive till we found a place later on at night (before it got too dark) to spend the night. As we left the Uluru area, there were massive storms to the right and left of us that were so breath taking. It looked as though they were passing from east to west and they were not going to come our way. Before we stopped for the night, I showed them Mt Connor and the Salt Lake where I had stopped earlier in the week. We drove till just after the sun went down (around 7:45pm) and found a free rest area/campsite on the highway. We set up our tents here and decided to call it a night. Probably the best thing we did at that point in time. The ground was really hard so it was tough to get the stakes into the ground, with rocks as my hammer I managed to get most of them in, including ones to keep the rain cover off the sides.

This is where it gets really interesting! The wind started to pick up, and it was so incredibly hot outside that I had my tent windows open. BIG mistake, the high winds were picking up the sand and it was coming in my tent. I closed them up, but the inside to the tent was already a light dusty red…. I was covered, my blankets and pillow were all gritty and it just hung in the air. Oh well, could get worse right? Well Anais and Espen where in the tent next to me so it was nice to know I wasn’t totally alone. The winds picked up more and more to the point that my tent shook uncontrollably. It was quite scary to say the least…. but the next thing I knew, the wind was blowing SO HARD that the front of my tent where the door was, was bowing in and down to the point it was almost touching me. I laughed because I have never seen anything like it, but also because I was freaked out. I yelled to the other 2 to see if they were OK, but over the wind it was hard to hear. All of a sudden, you could hear the little light pitter patter of rain starting. I thought, oh give me a break!! Nope, no break in sight. There was a full on monsoon that wreaked havoc on us that night. I was up most of the night due to thunder, lightning, loud wind and rain. I have never in my life tented through something like this. I was afraid that my rain fly was going to come off and I would be soaked. I was so exhausted at some point I fell asleep, but was woken up multiple times, and at one point there was water coming in from the front of my tent. ONLY because I didn’t close the extra door earlier that evening, and there was no way I was going to open it now in the pouring rain. So I scooted anything I had with me in the tent to the back to avoid the minor puddles. I am just so thankful that I had 2 other people traveling with me, so I was not totally alone during this outrageous night!