Hey everyone, how are you all??
Over the last 3 days, we've been travelling round the Red Centre of Australia, and it's been wonderful! We flew out relatively early on Wednesday morning straight to Ayers Rock airport, getting the shuttle bus to one of the hotels. From there we were picked up by the tour at 1.45pm and taken straight in to our campsite to pick everyone else up who had been brought down from Alice Springs. Once we were ready we hit the road and went to a place called Kata Tjuta, which literally means "many heads" which is a place with 36 domes of red rock, only 50km away from Uluru. It's actually more impressive than Uluru, the tallest dome standing almost 200m higher than Uluru, but noone's heard of Kata Tjuta as its nowhere near as commercialised as the biggest rock in the world. We got out the bus and were walking through one end of the formation, although we weren't allowed to climb any domes because it is a sacred place to the Aborigines.
After that, we headed out to a viewing point for Ayers Rock to see it in the sunset, and that was pretty spectacular. As the sun went down, it changed colour, going through various shades of red until the sun set. Having watched that, we headed back to the campsite for a barbecue dinner, before jumping into our swags and settling down for the night. Now, a swag is a very cool invention, its basically a canvas sleeping bag with a thin mattress inside, and you just jump in a sleeping bag, get in your swag, and bed down for the night, under the stars. It was so nice to be under the stars, but we couldn't spend too long looking at them as we were due to get up at 3.30 the next morning.
And up we got, bright and early, enough for us to get breakfast and head back out to another viewing point and watch Ayers rock in the sunRISE this time. So we saw the sunrise which was equally as impressive and then drove out to the rock where we did the base walk, a 9.5km walk round the bottom of Uluru, taking pictures as we went of the incredible landforms on Uluru. A lot of the rock we weren't allowed to take pictures of because they were sacred areas where the Aborigines would do their thing, and the punishments were quite severe for just taking a photo! Once we got to the end of the walk, a couple of people did the climb on the rock, but I decided not to in order to respect the Aborigines wishes. The rest of us were taken on a tour of various caves, cave art displays and watering holes whilst they were climbing, and it was quite interesting to hear about all the stories behind everything. The flies are unbearable though, they just don't go away!! It's so ANNOYING!!
Next up, we drove for about 4 hours to get to our next campsite near Kings Canyon, and EVERYONE was sleeping on the bus without fail. It was pretty uncomfortable though, especially for tall people, but we managed. Once into the next campsite, we built up the fire, got some dinner and then had a camp bake off, baking loaves of bread with a variety of ingredients in the fire, and they didn't come out too badly at all actually! We thought it would be handy having a baker on our team, that's Shaun, but we still managed to lose somehow. A bit more chat round the fire before we set out the swags again and went to sleep under the stars again.
Didn't have quite so early a start, but 6am was bad enough. Everyone got their stuff together and we set out for Kings Canyon where we walked round the top of it. The highlight was definitely the Garden of Eden, a place where you can head down to a lagoon which leads to a waterfall rightdown the middle of the canyon. Most of us went swimming in the lagoon, which was lovely and refreshing, and we went over to the waterfall and looked out. The view was spectacular, and i unfortunately didn't have my camera, but it was really stunning. There was a small waterfall just before the main one over the side of the canyon, and we were able to swim in that looking out over the canyon. Amazing, it really was.
After we finished the canyonwalk, we hit the bus again, and after making a short stop to refuel, we hit the road again heading for Alice Springs. This was a good 5 hour drive, so more sleeping and passing time until we got there. Once in the hostel, there was a pretty big queue for the shower (the hostel has an ensuite for each room of about 8 people - luxury in hostel terms!!) before we walked round to a bar where everyone was meeting for dinner and post-tour drinks. Today, we have a free day, but the trainee guide we were with has said he will take us out to some of the places in the MacDonnell range (right next to Alice) where we can swim and stuff, and all for free, only paying for petrol, so we're looking forward to that!!
Hope you're all well and the weathers not to cold!! xxxxxxx
