Waking up the next day and brushing off all the nightly spiders from our underwear, we had a quick breakfast and jumped into our bus heading for Uluru Kata-Tjuta National Park. On our way there, we stopped by some gloomy tourists who'd got a dromedary in their windshield. The dromedary was long gone, so hopefully no too serious injury had come to it. The tourists were out of mobile phone reach, so we called for the police to arrive at our next stop.
You usually don't think about it, but here's at least one faint similarity with Sahara: The Australian desert is packed with dromedaries. Studies say there's millions of them. That's cool, because I really like everything about them!
As I already said, the desert sand IS certainly red, but there's a lot more to it as well.
Here's a few native bugs and animals we encountered during the late morning. They're all simply beautiful creatures!
Instead of heading straight for The Rock, we went past it and went on for about half an hour until we reached The Olgas, a much less well known rock formation just around the corner. To me, initially, these dome shaped rocks actually appeared a lot more interesting than Ayers Rock itself. I mean, it's just a rock, right? Here's plenty and they form some incredible sceneries!
I know what you're thinking now. How in the world did these things form? Well, I don't remember everything about it(I was concentrating on the scenery, not so much our guide at this point), but the basics are that the land level initially has been as high or higher than these rock stretch today, and everything else around it has just eroded over millions of years. Why these formations have survived might be anyones guess, but probably they're just a tad harder rock than the rest. But who really cares, huh, just enlarge the pics below and check out the SIZE of those things!
Here's a jumping pic Dave the guide took of us three. Don't ask about my expression, I just wanted to go really high, okay?
This scenery really reminded me of images I've seen in comic books. That's how surreal they feel.
After a good two hour walk around in the area we headed just outside the formations for some additional pictures and a tortilla lunch.
The local shithouse I visited housed some interesting dwellers: Here's a giant stick insect which in my book counts as one of the more ingenious camouflage creatures, and the Red-back spider, the most venomous spider in Australia. Nothing too fancy to run into when you're relaxing on the loo, don't you think?
Now, if you don't mind me bragging for once (ehm...), I really enjoy how this image turned out. It really shows the nature around the national park and includes both The Olgas and The Rock, revealing how close they are to each other.
Here's a small warning: From this point on, this blog will transform to show and talk about Ayers Rock and little more. If you get fed up with all rockrockrock-talk and think it's not worth a gazillion of images, then you might be right, but for me The Rock turned out to be so much more than just a normal flat rock with a 8km circumference. My initial impressions of it from further away and images I'd seen before had told me a very narrow part of the whole story. First of all, compare these two images to each other: The first one is from the angle ALL postcard shots of this rock are taken from, the second one is from another direction. It changes as you move, alright.
A bit closer we got to the base where the climbs usually take place, and Dave gave us the reasons for why we shouldn't do it. I was pretty clear already before hearing about this that I'm not going to head up there, and actually we didn't even get the chance: The climb was closed. There are a number of real reasons why not to climb it, though. First and foremost: It's a sacred site for the locals, and you might wanna respect their wishes as they do own the land and have been there for a bit longer than you. More, it's actually pretty dangerous(36 people have died trying) if the climb doesn't get you then the heat might, going up there and not finding a toilet has no enjoyable ecological nor hygienic results, people steal rocks, etc. etc. The number of people climbing the rock gets lower each year, and they reckon it's going to get closed permanently in the coming times. Good choice, I'd say.
The base around the rock is also an important habitat for wildlife...
... and the smaller cave formations and textures really give the rock a mysterious nature. The cracks in the surface origin from the intense expansion and contraction the large temperature differences between day and night cause.
After the short visit to the rock base (a proper base walk was scheduled for the next day) we headed to the sunset lookout point and had noodles for dinner. It was delicious eating outside, and the rock did change color from a red-brown daylight to orange and dark red/purple pretty rapidly as the sun started setting.
The short evening was spent at Ayers Rock campground which was luxurious in that it offered us toilets and showers! After some eating and listening to Dave's singing and playing, we crawled quickly into out swags as we were going to get up after 4 am the next morning to witness the famous Uluru sunrise.
It might have been the anticipation, but I woke up some fifteen minutes before everyone else and grabbed this picture of the Southern starry sky. The Aussie-desert is one of the best places on Earth to get these amazing views into the universe.
Stay tuned for the last day of the Rock Tour, where we get close and personal with the Rock itself!
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