Ayres Rock (Uluru) is absolutely stunning, as well as the Olgas, which are a lesser-known formation about 20 km from Ayres Rock. The colors are unlike anything I’ve seen before. It really is as red as the photos I’ve seen before coming here, and the detail in the rock is even more impressive in person. Of course, everyone likes to take photos of a big rock in the middle of nowhere, and I’m no exception. But instead of just taking some wide shots, I took some detail ones as well. They show you how much texture the rock has and how beautiful it really is.
I didn’t get the chance to climb Uluru (the native owners don’t want you to climb it in the first place, but they understand the need for some people to climb every rock they come upon) because of high winds. There’s nothing to hang onto up there, so I would have been blown over the edge at some point. Hence, I’m not too disappointed for not being able to climb it.
Being the kind of person I am, I made friends with a lot of the staff I talked to. Some are younger than me, and others are older than me, but they all have a great love for this place and couldn’t imagine working anywhere else. I can understand the love they have for the rock and the people around them. Yaluru, the township the resort is in, is the closest town, with Alice Springs about 400 km to the East, which makes this pretty much the middle of nowhere.
The first night here, I went on the sunset tour of the Olgas, and I’ve never met a more tenacious fly than the Aussie bush fly. These things just flew around you and crawled up your nose, into your ears, and just about everywhere else. It was very odd. Of course, they sell these fly net things for your head, and when I first got here and looked at people walking around wearing them, I thought, “I’m not going to be caught dead wearing that.” But after my sunset trip to the Olgas, I thought, “The first purchase I’m going to make when I get back to the hotel is the head fly net.” Pride be damned, I was not going to let a fly, or in this case, a hundred flies ruin my time here. So I’ve attached a before and after shot of me without and with the fly net. I’m telling you, the net was the best 10 dollars I’ve ever spent. Of course, on my first night here, they held a BBQ for us, and I ate my first helping of kangaroo, and it was pretty darn tasty.
Something else about this part of Australia, there’s no light pollution, so you can see so many stars. I wish I had a telescope here, but it wouldn’t have fit in my backpack. The only power they have here is done by a generator farm just outside of the resort area. The population without tourists is about 1500 people, and they all work at the resort or the park.
I don’t know why, but I did the sunrise tour of Uluru. Guess what? The tour company had to pick us up at 5:00 AM for us to make it in time to see the sunrise at 6:15, which meant, of course, I had to get up at 4:00 AM to make it to the bus in time. You know how well I like the morning; well, I was able to make it till about noon before I collapsed. Of course, the 9.4 km walk around the base of Uluru on an empty stomach had something to do with the exhaustion, I’m sure. Not only did I decide to get up at stupid o’clock to see the sunrise, I decided to do the sunset on the same day. Needless to say, I was less than awake for the sunset, but I think I got some good shots of the rock changing color.
Somehow, there was a glitch with the booking process, and I got put onto two different sunrise tours of Uluru on different days. Well, given my level of excitement of getting up at 4:00 AM for the first sunrise, I was less than thrilled about doing it again. So I let the tour go without me and decided to work on my tan/burn and sit by the pool for most of the day. Which turned out to be the better choice, I feel. I walked around once the sun set and got a chance to see some of the local wildlife, and no, I don’t mean the pub, although that’s where I ended up last night.
Well, that’s about it from Uluru. Now I’m sitting here on the plane, just putting the finishing touches on this blog and trying to think of a generic cover letter that I can use when applying for some jobs when I get back to Melbourne.
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