Wednesday May 21, 2014

Another early start, even earlier than expected as I had forgotten to change the time on my alarm clock – oops.

First problem, we couldn’t get out of the hostel gate.  It is locked at night and we needed a code to get in and out.  The code was on the key fob, which we had already handed in at reception.  Fortunately one of the young Asians remembered his number and used that to let us out. Pick up was on time.  We are on a 21 passenger bus with 17 young Asian people and one girl from Austria.

The sun rose behind us at 6:45 a.m.  I mention this because we have a view of the sun-rising over Uluru tomorrow morning.

First stop on the trip was at a camel farm and station.  We, of course, took the $7.00 each camel ride.

Ralf got friendly with the emu.  The emu wasn\’t so keen on me, he kept walking away from me.

There were also some kangaroos.  The difference between northern roos and southern roos is primarily the colour and the texture of the fur.  Northern roos are red.

James is our driver and very friendly.  He has decided I am to be the trip mother – ha ha if he only knew.  Over the next three days we will be walking 21 kms, and driving 1,600 kms.

Our next break was at the Mount Ebenezer Road House and Cattle Station.  The cattle station across the road was for sale – asking price $4,000,000 Australian dollars for 863,000 acres of land and 3,000 head of cattle.

After lunch we went to the Uluru and Kata Tjuta National Park.  We first were told about Uluru (Ayers Rock) and that it is a sacred site for the aboriginal and were requested not to climb Uluru.  We then went into the Cultural Centre where again we were requested not to climb Uluru.  After we spent about half an hour in the Cultural Centre we were taken on a guided walk by James our tour guide.

All tour guides have to be accredited by the University to be allowed to lead groups in the National park.  James told us two stories told by the aboriginal elders to their children and then left us to walk half way around the base of Uluru.  Ralf really wanted to climb Uluru, he was still undecided whether to or not.  However, it became a non-issue as the climb was closed due to the weather forecast – expecting rain.

There are also certain areas along the base of Uluru that they request you not to photograph, again due to religious significance.  These areas were either significant to the men or the women.  Men were not allowed to see the women’s areas and vice versa.

It started to rain just as we were finishing our first walk.  James picked us up in the bus and drove us to the water hole, commenting along the way that is very rare to see Uluru wet.

Fortunately the rain stopped long enough for us to walk to the water hole and hear the story of the 2 snakes and see some cave drawings.

We then drove the viewing area to see the sun set.  It was still very cloudy and didn’t look as if we would get to see Uluru change colour.

Usually at the sun set area the tour is provided with champagne (sparkling wine) and snacks.  James had asked if we wanted to forgo the snacks and champagne and head back to the camp site so that we could commandeer the laundry room.  The forecast for tonight was for heavy rain and thunder storms, if we were first back to the camp site we could put the swags indoors and not get wet.  Otherwise we would be able to put them under the kitchen area but the swags are not waterproof and the kitchen area would only provide limited protection from the rain.  We decided on having the ‘champagne’ at dinner.

We left the viewing area about five minutes before the sun had completely set.  Of course, as we were driving down the road the sun came from behind the cloud and lit up Uluru.  James quickly found a safe place to pull over and we got some great shots of the Big Red Rock.

We headed back to the campsite with a very happy bus.  We also were first into the laundry room where we set up our swags.  A swag is a glorified body bag!  It has a water-proof rubberized bottom, a mattress and a canvas top that zips all around and then a cover that covers your face – body bag.

About a dozen of us rolled out our swags and were warm and dry all night.  The others decided to roll their swags underneath the kitchen shelter and half of them got wet when the storms rolled through during the night.

After dinner of chicken stir fry we chatted with the group while James went to fuel the vehicle ready for the next day. Ralf and I were trying to guess the ages of the group, there was one young woman who looked about 16 but she was actually the oldest in the group at 30!  We were all having a good laugh at how bad our guesses were.  Even funnier was when we asked them to guess our ages.  They thought Ralf was 60ish and I was younger.  We told them our ages and had a good laugh.

After James came back we chatted with him by the fire and were in bed by 10ish.  Another long day and another early start planned for tomorrow.