The alarm woke us up nice and early this morning - at about 5am, because Dom, our Outback tour driver was picking us up at about 6am. We'd already packed our bags last night so we got up, had some breakfast and then got on the bus. We did a couple of stops and then were headed South out of Alice Springs - on our way to the heart of the Red Centre.
It is almost 500kms from Alice to Uluru and so we were going to be making a couple of stops along the way - to break up our journey. Our first stop was on a farm, where Dom was able to refuel the bus and the rest of us could buy some beer. Although we only seen the petrol pumps and shop, the actual property was huge... it was roughly the same size as Holland!
We made a couple more stops and then made it to the Ayers Rock Resort, where we were gonna be spending the night. Dom checked us in and found our 'patch of dirt' we were gonna be sleeping on before we all jumped back on board and headed for... The Rock.
Before going to Uluru, we went to the Cultural Centre, which was just a short distance away - and we could see Uluru in the background. Despite seeing tons of pictures - it was still pretty spectacular when we saw it. As we approached it, the first thing I noticed was how it was a bright orange colour - and it was surrounded by thousands of trees. The soil is really red and the landscape is so hostile looking that you'd think NOTHING has a chance of growing there - but it does - and it's all quite green! The Cultural Centre explained how the site is sacred the the Anangu - who are Uluru's traditional owners. It also showed how they lived around the area - hunting for food and looking for water etc.
When we left the Cultural Centre, we did a drive around Uluru in the bus - to prepare ourselves for the size of it. When that was done we started to walk around the base of this HUGE rock. We walked for about 2kms as a whole group - and Dom told us the creation stories that he knew for various spots. Only parts of Uluru are sacred - and not the whole site. Only the Anangu know the stories for these parts - and even then you need to earn the right. Some parts are sacred to men - and the women don't know and others sacred to women, that the men will never know about!
Next it was time to decide on what 'walk' everyone wanted to do. As today's temperature was above 36° - climbing Uluru was out of the question (80-odd people have died trying to do so - so they close it if it's too hot), but seven of us decided that we'd still like to do walk the entire base - a total distance of 9.4km (Nikki included). The walk was fascinating! Uluru is massive - in some parts it just towers above you and is quite a sight. As there were clouds in the sky today (apparently for the first time in 5 weeks) it also kept changing colour as the sun passed behind them - from the orange, to red - to an almost purple colour. Apparently, if it rains, it can even turn a greenish colour.
Once everyone was back together on the bus we drove to the point in which we were going to watch the sunset. The viewpoint was packed, but we found a spot and Dom started to cook us some tea whilst the rest of us watched the sun go down. Even though the sky was quite cloudy the change in light still had an amazing effect on the colours. We ate our tea in the last of the sunlight and then headed back to our camp.
Tonight, we all had showers and then sat around chatting before setting up our swags (basically a mattress inside a thick sleeping bag thing) and sleeping in the big outdoors. Nikki was terrified that some creepy-crawly would climb in with her - but was much braver than I imagined she would be and fell asleep quite quickly. I decided not to tell her than Dom had spotted dingo tracks around our site!
Uluru... DEFINITELY worth a visit!
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