Kearse and I took a flight from Sydney to Uluru, literally flying right by the rock to land at a small airport nearby. It was really neat to fly across the Outback and see vast expanses of endless red sand dotted with green trees and bushes. The sand was, indeed, very very red, and it stains everything- shoes, socks, shirts, hats, backpacks, hands, trees, rocks, cliff faces, you name it. It reminded me of red Georgia clay and the surface of Mars. At this time, there are heaps of bushes and trees across the landscape as the Outback has seen a generous amount of rainfall this year. Apparently there is about a twelve-year cycle where the Outback goes from dry to "wet" to dry again. I'm currently seeing it in its "wet" season. Oh and there is a time change from Sydney of an hour and a half! When have you ever experienced a time change in half hour increments?? It happens across Australia.
Upon landing in Uluru, you get the feeling that you are in the middle of nowhere. The nearest town (Alice Springs) is 600 km away. There were very few workers at the airport, save for a few baggage handlers and shuttle drivers (since there's nothing out there, workers are put up in hostel-type lodging for shifts of about six months to a year). The place was hot hot hot! Extreme sunlight and hardly any breeze or shade. The temperature the day we landed was 40 degrees Celsius (about 100 F)! The shuttle driver told us that the Uluru area was cooling down, as last week it got up to 43 Celcius, and four tourists died from overexposure/dehydration! It's pretty much a law out here to have one liter of water (and drink it) for every hour you will be outside.
Lucky for us, we ended up getting quite a bit of cloud cover and a slight breeze during the day, which was a blessing! Our tour guide also had us get up at 4:30 each morning to pack up camp and leave by 5:30. We finished all of our hikes before 11am to avoid being outside during the hottest and most dangerous part of the day. Nevertheless, there were 23 people on our tour that were crammed in to a small bus, which made the trip a hot orgy of sweat and sunscreen. I like to call it "raw humanity" as there's no way you could have possibly avoided being sweaty, greasy, and smelly. Yum!
We spent three days and two nights on this tour. Despite the blistering hot weather, we had a blast on this trip and met awesme people! Our guide was of the oldest of the group at young 25 years old. She was fun and energetic, LOVES Uluru and the Anangu people, and had the nickname Lewy.
On our tour there was Hanna from England traveling with Nina from Germany, some of the most hilarious, good humored people I've met. Hanna and Nina met while working at a Subway in the Outback (the most visited Subway in all of Australia!), and they've been traveling together for 9 months now. They had both been traveling and needed to find work to save up money for the next part of their trip. They made $24 an hour at this Subway because it's in the middle of nowhere. Logging 70 hours a week, they were able to quickly save a lot of money.
We also met a pair of girls from Sweden (Annika and Johanna) who met while both traveling solo; two girls from Denmark (Anne-Metta and Charlotte) who are traveling after having completed hair dressing school; three boys from Ireland who were not very talkative and kept to themselves; a girl Kaley from England who has been traveling for two years now, has no intention of returning home, and wants to marry an American boy at Elvis's chapel in Las Vegas; a local Aussie Eleanor who was super friendly and chatty; a girl Eleanora from Milan, Italy who was quiet but as sweet as can be; Natalie from Germany on a trip between college and work like Kearse and I; a girl Jill from Canada traveling solo; and 8 Koreans. Kearse and I who were dubbed Team America by creepy old dude Andi. So yes, it was a trip with lots of solo traveling girls. I enjoyed talking with them about their adventures and tips for traveling alone. I think I'm working up the courage to embark on my own for a week or so after Kearse goes back to the States to start work.
We spent the first day of the tour at Kata Tjuta, which is a rock formation with 36 domes. Kata Tjuta means "many heads" in the Anangu language and it is a sacred "men's only" place. There is a small hike in between two of the domes, but that's as far as tourists are allowed to go. There are currently trees and bushes growing here, and there were flocks and flocks of little zebra finches in this crevasse. The presence of the finches means that there is an abundance of water, and Lewy she had never seen so many of them in her 10 months of giving this tour. There were so many finches that they covered the little trees and flew in swarms right at you!
Apart from what I originally though, Kata Tjuta is actually not a rock. It is a conglomerate of rocks that you can see when you get up close. You know those wooden boards that are made with saw dust and glue? Kata Tjuta is like that, like a handful of gravel mixed with thick glue. I don't remember all of Lewy's geology spiel, but I do remember her saying that the conglomerate formed underground and then broke and came through the surface of the earth like a compound fracture. On the other hand, Uluru is a solid rock mass (like Stone Mountain) that broke up through the surface in the same manner
That evening we watched the sun set on Uluru as the rock face changed from red-orange to a deep purple. We barbecued thin kangaroo steaks and camel sausages for dinner back at camp (with salads and couscous with zucchini), and then slept out that night in swags. A swag is like a canvas sleeping bag with a mattress sewn in the bottom. You place your real sleeping bag inside the swag, as well as your shoes, flashlight ("torch" in Aussie), etc. I ended up just sleeping on top of my swag because it was so hot. Lewy's swag was pretty tricked out with bed sheets and pillows (because she sleeps in her swag on tour more often than in her bed). It's common for Aussies to have their own swags, as Eleanor has one at home and often sleeps in it on the floor in front of the TV (or "tele" as they say in AUS).
I taught the others that a "swag" in the U.S. is your walk, your swagger. So then we all walked around with swag while laying out our swags. Quite entertaining! I was looking forward to seeing a sky full of stars the first night (as the closest major light source is 600 km away in Alice Springs, but it was cloudy that night so I saw very few stars. However I did see the Southern Cross low on the horizon! The Southern Cross is a constellation that you can only see in the southern hemisphere, mainly in Australia, and it's something I've been just dying to see in my lifetime. Take a look at the Australian flag, it has the Southern Cross on it.
The next morning we left camp at 5:30am to watch the sunrise at Uluru. The rock face changed from a dark blue to a light purple and then to its daytime red. Actually, the surface Uluru is only red because of the red sand being blown into the rock. Underneath the thin layer of red, Uluru is gray. Watching the sunrise reminded me of being in Inner Mongolia when we got up early and watched the sun rise over the grasslands.
After the sunrise, we did a 10 km walk around the base of Uluru. I had no idea that there was so much at the rock! It's like a little city! Caves have formed around the base of the rock that served as dwellings for the Anangu. Many of the caves are separate and sacred men's and women's areas only, and we don't know what they were used for. However, there was also a "kitchen" where the rocks had been smoothed away by the continuous grinding of seeds and fruits. These seeds and fruits were mixed with animal fat and stored in the crevasses of the rock to make granola bars, fascinating! There was also a "learning cave" where the Anangu children were taught stories and lessons. The rock face was used as a drawing board and had Anangu paintings all over it! There were no erasers ("dusters" in Aussie) though, so there are layers of paintings painted over paintings. There are black trails down the sides of Uluru that were made by water when it rains on Uluru. The trails looked like the shadows of waterfalls. It would've been neat to see water actually flow down Uluru. There was even a watering hole and little forest of trees nestled in part of the base. I saw a dingo here!
After our base walk, we ate sandwiches and drove 4 hours to Kings Canyon. We saw wild camels, red kangaroos, and wild horses along the way! We also stopped for a view of Mount Cooper and a salt lake. All of the salt lakes are dried up in the Outback, but they left behind a thick and soft layer of salt, like what would remain if you were to you boil a pot of salty water.
We made spaghetti dinner that night. Or should I say, Kearse made spaghetti dinner that night for the whole tour. What a champ! Much like their sandwiches, Aussies will put anything in their spaghetti sauce, and I will probably adopt some of their ingredients back home, especially the carrots and zucchini, yum!
There was a thunderstorm for about an hour that evening. The lightening was magnificent and the thunders REALLY loud, but the downpour chased everyone into their tents. I waited out the storm, hoping the sky would clear up afterward so I could see some stars. What a reward! Kearse, Hanna, Nina, and I pulled our swags outside (the ground, like a thirsty sponge, had already sucked up all of the rain water) and gazed up at the stars. The sky was full of them! There were so many stars crowding within and around Orion that you could hardly make out the constellation itself! There's actually a line of stars that vary in brightness to look like 3-D telescope scooting out of the sky. (This is placed right above the popular three star line in Orion, which many believe the placement of the Great Pyramids of Giza was modeled after). Because of all of the stars, I had difficulty locating the Southern Cross. I tried to get a picture but it wouldn't come out. The Big Dipper was also difficult to spot as it is upside-down compared to how we see it in the U.S. We could also see the Milky Way stretch across the sky, and I spotted three shooting stars lower on the horizon!
The next morning we rose early for our 6 km rim walk at Kings Canyon. There are several warnings about the rim walk, not only because it is hot and you need to bring ample supplies or water, but also because you will be walking along cliffs made of sandstone. If you get to close to the edge, the rock beneath you can crumble and fall. Lewy even told us that hikers with backpacks should watch out, as one time a man turned and knocked his daughter off a 150 meter high cliff with his backpack...
The first part of the hike is named Heart Attack Hill, as it is a steep climb from the base of the canyon up to the top. Afterward, it's a nice hike along the top "in full sun" as Lewy liked to say. Like Uluru, Kings Canyon appears to be made of red rock. However, King's Canyon is actually white underneath the thin layer of red. There is even a watering hole at the base of the canyon that is surrounded by gum trees and called the Garden of Eden
There are over 600 species of plants at Kings Canyon. If that doesn't seem like much, think about this- there are only 60 species of plants by Uluru. Lewy taught us about several of the trees and bushes at the top of the canyon- ghost gums that have white bark to protect them from the sun, the tree that the Anangu made spears out of because it has a toxin that paralyzes, and a bush with leaves that can temporarily blind you if you touch them and then touch your eyes (the Anangu would punish people by blinding them and leaving them in the Outback. When the blindness wore off, they faced the challenge of finding their way back. There's also a poison bush that the Anangu would collect to later burn off the poisonous casing and eat the healthy inside. When the white man saw the Anangu picking these leaves, they assumed it was safe and did the same. The white man never saw the burning process, so they would die from eating the poisonous parts. The Anangu thought this was a great fortune, and would often trick the white man in this way. Interesting.
We finished the day with classic Australian sandwiches, and I saw a huge Red Back (black widow spider) in the bathroom!! I've got a disgusting picture of it. We then piled in the bus for the 500 km drive back to Alice Springs. The nearest public bathroom was 300 km away (about 3 hours), so yes, we were in the middle of no where. It was kind of neat thinking about where I was on a map at that time- smack dab in the middle of Australia. Crazy! On our way home, we saw rain storms in the distant, and then ended up driving through a hail storm! Twice! Ice falling from the sky in the desert! It was insane! You couldn't even see the road because of all the rain, fog, and hail. I'm adding it to my list of abnormal occurrences- rainstorm in the Gobi Desert while riding camels, rain in Egypt for the first time in 8 months, and now hail in the Outback.
We arrived in Alice Springs that evening. I was excited about seeing the little town, but there wasn't much to it. I didn't feel very safe there either. Lewy booked us a table at a bar Annie's, which was an awesome time. We all had $5 fish and chips, drinks at the bar, and then said our goodbyes at the end of the night. I'm so glad we did the tour! There's really no other way to see Uluru. It was a great experience with great people!
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