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Day 68 - Uluru (Ayers Rock) to Cairns
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We got up at about 4:45am, which was a bit of a shock to the system, and we pretty much fell over each other and bumped into each other until we left the room.
It was nearly pitch black outside, but we found the car ok and set off for the rock.
Yesterday we'd bought park entrance tickets which were about A$25 each and last for 3 days. You just need to write your name on the front and you're good to go.
As we passed through the entrance, and sped towards the 'sun-rise viewing area', we could see that there was a lot of cloud around, but you could make out the silhouette of the rock.
We passed a few cars to make sure we got to the viewing area with plenty of time, and there were already about 30 huge buses full of tour groups (mainly Japanese), and plenty of cars.
All the tours included breakfast, and there was something faintly comical about the tables of tea & coffee laid out in front of each bus...
We jumped (fell) out of the car, tried to focus our tired eyes on the rock, and walked around the area trying to find the best spot.
I fired off a few photos to see before/after, and they were less than impressive !
Soon the sky behind us started to show off some amazing colours...
...throwing the first beams of sunlight onto the face of the rock...
Minute by minute the quality of light improved, despite the cloud which did its best to keep things dull for us all.
It was really interesting to watch the skies around us come to life, and to see the effect the light had on the face of the rock, I think I only took about 4000 photos, which seems quite reasonable...
At one point we had a few spots of rain, and a rainbow appeared right behind the rock, almost bisecting it...
...and then a few minutes later a second rainbow appeared just above it. I can't remember the last time I saw a double rainbow, and judging from the noise coming from the Japanese section, I'm not even sure if they exist over there ?!?!? They were like the Ewoks when they see C3-PO for the first time !!!!!
Pretty soon the sun was officially "up", and we were officially ready for some breakfast, and probably some more sleep.
We stopped off on the way for a few more photos, and then set off back to the resort.
After some food & a bit more sleep we checked-out, chucked all our bags in the car, and decided to head off to the Olgas, the ancient mountain range about 45 minutes away from Uluru.
They say that at one point in the past the Olgas were one solid monolith like Uluru, but that over time it was eroded naturally, and eventually became 10-15 rounded stone peaks, which may not be as iconic as Uluru, but they are arguably more interesting to look at...
We REALLY wanted to do a hike called "Valley of the Winds", which is about 9 kms through the Olgas, winding in, over and around the peaks.
The problem was that it was about 11am when we arrived, the big walk took 3 hours, but we had to return the hire car at 12pm. Luckily the lady had given us an hour's grace so we could return it at 1pm without any penalty, but we still wouldn't have time to do the full walk and get home in time, as it would take us 45 minutes to drive back...
We decided to try and speed our way around the smallest walk and see how long it took us. We could then work out how far we could get around the trail with the time that we had available.
The walk to the first lookout was alleged to take 1 hour. We did it in 28 minutes.
The walk to the second lookout was another hour, we were then in a total of 50 minutes.
Excited by the realisation that in theory the big 3 hour walk could only take us and hour and a half (which still put us back at the office at 1:15pm), we debated whether we wanted to risk penalty charges for a late return - we also had to fill up with petrol and dump our bags - or whether we should play it safe and walk back.
It will probably surprise none of you that we thought "let's go for it", so off we charged towards the final 'loop' stage of the full walk, which was graded "difficult".
The walk over the mountains, then through the middle of them (valley !), and then round and back to the start took us exactly 1hr 30 mins, and by the time we got back to the car we were both absolutely exhausted !!!!
The last stage was hard work, especially when we were walking as fast as we could with no stops, and you could tell by some of the looks we got from fellow hikers that it was pretty obvious that we were giving it everything...
We were tired & sweaty but determined to get back as soon as possible, so after replenishing the petrol and driving like Burt Reynolds in The Cannonball Run we arrived at the office at about 1:15pm. The lady at the desk kind of shrugged like "yeh, whatever", and that was it ! Legend !
We had a bit of downtime before our bus back to the airport, so we made some sandwiches for lunch and got ourselves ready for our flight to Cairns.
Before we knew it we were checked-in and going through one of the tightest security searches ever, in one of the smallest airports ever, and sat down in comfy chairs watching a loop of cosmetic ads for the same product over and over and over and over and over....... AAAAAAGGGGGHHH make it stop !!!!!
The flight to Cairns was fairly long but uneventful, so we touched down in Queensland's second city just as it was getting dark.
They had a surprisingly organised taxi line, and the lady was very helpful, even securing us another 2 people to share our taxi to the same area.
The couple were from Ireland, and were heading for Uluru the next day, so we gave them the lowdown and within 10 minutes were outside our hotel.
The lady at the rank had told us that the taxi would be a total of A$16 (i.e. A$8 per couple), so it was a bit of a surprise when the driver tried to charge us A$18 per couple !!!
I've had enough of these situations now, so was able to argue the toss with him, telling him what we'd been told when we got in, and that we had absolutely no intention of giving him a cent more than A$16, so he would have to take it up with the lady at the airport, etc etc.
This culminated with him telling me to "just get out" after I gave the other couple our A$8, and I was only too happy to oblige. Tosser.
Our backpacker hotel was central and friendly, and the room was wicked, nice and big, with air con, fan, fridge, telly, full kitchen, good sized bathroom. Nice one.
We were both knackered after our early start, so we decided to grab some quick food and then get an early night, as apparently Cairns is a pretty boring city.
I've never heard anyone say anything nice about it, yet when we walked out of the hotel it seemed like a pretty nice place. It was lively, with loads of backpackers spilling out of some decent bars, and there were loads of reasonable food options.
As we walked down our street I saw this HUGE black shape swoop across the street, it was about the size of a vulture ! On closer inspection I realised that a) it was the biggest bat that I'd ever seen, and b) I was going to enjoy pointing this out to Katie !!
I still don't think she believes me that this thing was a bat, it was absolutely MASSIVE...
We then flirted with the idea of walking down to the marina, but sacked that off when we remembered that the lock on our door was pretty dodgy and we had all our gear & passports/tickets in the room.
So we plumped for a couple of takeaway pizzas and a couple of beers, and sat in our room watching X-Men 2 !!!!
The film is probably about 2 hours long, but on Aussie telly they have the MOST commercial breaks that I've ever seen ! They're even worse than America !!!!
So the 2 hour film lasted over 3 hours !!!!! It was a struggle, but you know when you start a film it's very hard to not watch the end... and it did have Halle Berry in it.... and Famke Jansen... and a Rebecca Romin whatserface... ;)
It wouldn't have been as painful but the adverts were truly awful. 1 in every 3 was a party political advert because the Aussie elections are coming up in a few weeks. And these adverts are VICIOUS !!! Very personal and very weird, all very negative and critical of the currently elected posts...
I think we could pretty much repeat most of them ad verbatim by the end of the film, even in the various Aussie accents !!!! Dreadful.
We were looking forward to picking up our hire car tomorrow and heading north to Cape Tribulation, and as usual we fell asleep praying for good weather tomorrow...
Lots of love,
Al & Katie xx
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