Uluru & Kata Tjuta

The third leg of our trip was Uluru (Ayers Rock). After landing at Ayers Rock Airport, we took the free Ayers Rock Resort shuttle to The Lost Camel Hotel and booked a bus to take us to the rock, we were lucky that Uluru was open to climbers because it is closed 200 days out of the year because of poor visibility and high winds. We expected that there would be a number of aborigines at the base of Uluru talking people out of climbing their sacred ground and staring down those who proceed with the climb anyway, but there weren’t any. So we began the climb. The first half of the climb is really steep and arduous; Liz seemed daunted by the initial steep ascent and David doubted she could proceed with the climb, asking her several times, “are you sure you want to do this?” With Liz’s propensity for accidents, David was actually more worried about her falling off the damn rock than doubtful of her ability to climb it. Once one gets past the part of the climb that has a chain link rail to hold on to, it is quite easy to proceed to the top. The views from the top were great, in the distance you can see a large formation of rocks (which we later learned was Kata Tjuta). We were both struck by the fact that there were some shrubs and grass sprouting on different parts of the rock. The ascent took us a little over an hour but the descent was fun and fast, David was actually running up and down some of the rolling hills near the summit. After descending we walked around a portion of the base to a water hole; the rock is really quite enormous when you’re right next to it and there are huge valleys in it giving it great depth in certain spots, creating very striking shadows and color. We then walked the 2 kilometers over to the Cultural Center and looked through the exhibits and over priced aboriginal arts and crafts in the shop.

Our second day at Ayers Rock, we ventured over to Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) for a 7.5km walk through the Valley of the Winds. Kata Tjuta is a group of mammoth round masses of rock (rounded and smoothed by the wind) rising out of the desert, its aboriginal name means many heads. There are some rocks that are closely bunched together with narrow precipitous crevices between them, other rocks are more spaced apart. The hike took us through this impressive geological formation, giving us different perspectives of Kata Tjuta thoughout our walk. We were surprised that it isn’t as well known as Uluru; it was definitely more impressive than Uluru itself. After our hike through Kata Tjuta, we headed over to the Uluru sunset viewing area. The rock takes on so many different shades of red and orange as the sun sets, it was really beautiful. After the sunset, we headed over to a cook your own bbq restaurant and watched a rugby match with the Aussies. It was a fantastic day.

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