Uluru

Monday 25 October 2010

It was a very early morning, but we were up before the alarm clock. A bus picked us up. A lady was doing commentary on the bus, but she was pointing out things that no one would care about or remember. At any sight or "interest point", she would say "It is worth having a look at." As we were leaving another hostel, we saw two dingos. Wow, our first wildlife practically. Pretty sad. We were told that since it has been raining so much in Australia, the wildlife (including kangaroos) were not coming to the side of the road. So it is more difficult to spot. We got to see cows. That was real exciting, since we have never seen those before...At a rest stop, we saw 12 emus. It was kind of interesting seeing so many there.

A man later took on the driving and started talking. This man would not stop talking. Not that anything he was saying was important or relevant. He just liked the sound of his own voice. Later, he had us watch this horrible movie about camels. I never really cared for camels, but this movie made me dislike them with a passion!

The first sight we saw was a rock. Not Ayres Rock, but False Rock. Apparently, many people would go to see Ayres Rock, think this rock was it, and drive away. They never saw the rock at all! We climbed a hill with a lot of red sand. There were pretty good views of the outback here. Although, it was not the outback you would typically expect. For one thing, it was cold. Yes, cold and raining! Also, there was vegetation everywhere. It has rained so much in the outback that there is a lot of growth here. They got their average annual rainfall in just the month of February. Remember February is a summer month, and it has rained every month of the year. It was crazy. Not the typical desolate, dry, hot outback you would expect.

Our next stop was Kata Tjuta. We entered the national park. The colouring of these rocks were incredible. We were able to go across the path in the Gorge for a while. I used every bit of available time. I love hiking. There were so many flies that would land on people's backs, so the guide had a kind of whip. He hit us upon entering the bus to get them off, and just to be annoying.

After Kata Tjuta, it was time for Ayres Rock. We should have been able to see it, but it was so overcast, the clouds hid it. Finally, around one of the many bends, we were able to see it. It was huge! Apparently, only 1/5 of this rock is exposed. The rest is underground. The rock is supposed to change colour depending on the different times of day. Since it was raining so much, we pretty much got the same colour all day. We had two hikes around the rock. The first walk talked about the different sections of the rock and all the stories. The second one had sections we actually couldn't take photographs, because it is very sacred to the aboriginal people. We got to see some of the artwork. It was really neat.

So, I didn't mention this, but there were waterfalls on the rock. Since it was raining so much, there were literally waterfalls running down the rock. There were even puddles. In some of those puddles were tadpoles. These tadpoles could live underground for 5 years and then poke up during a rainfall...or so we were told. A downside to the abundance of rain was, we were not allowed to climb the rock. That would have been amazing!

Then we went to another view point of the rock. The sun poked out a couple times, so we got to see a little different colouring. It was quite spectacular. Then we went to dinner. So, I didn't talk about this, but throughout the whole trip, we have been eating like crazy. We had breakfast lunch and dinner, but we brought a lot of snacks. We weren't exactly sure how much they would feed us. So, we each ate: 4 apples, a bag of OJ, cheese and crackers, sandwich, some chocolate thing, Orange slices, cantaloupe, lollies, chocolate covered fruit and nuts, a crunchie bar, our own cheese and crackers, a musseli bar thing, salad, cabbage, sausages, tomato, pineapple...It was ridiculous. We were bottomless pits.

From eating all this food, we had a lot of rubbish to get rid of. We were going to get rid of it when we got to our hostel, but they were taking forever and we were losing motivation. So we were going to leave it on our seat. We didn't want the guides to think it was us, so we tried to sneak it on the seat in front of us. We didn't like that either, so we snuck it back and kicked it under the seat in front of us as if someone forgot it was there. I know, we were not very nice. In fact, we were just mean.