Alice Springs, Uluru (Ayers Rock)
Trip Start
Jun 15, 2008
1
39
102
Trip End
Jun 14, 2009
Alice Springs,
Northern Territory,
Australia
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Got our morning flight to Alice Springs from Sydney, and as soon as the plane doors opened the heat hit us. it was baking hot, apparently 40degrees C. We checked into our hostel and sorted out our 3 day tour for the following day and settled in for the evening.
3rd Oct.
The tour we took was with The Rock Tour - a 3 Day trip of Kings Canyon, Yulara, Kata Juta, and Uluru (Ayers Rock) - absolutely class tour and would highly recommend this tour company, they were great. The craic was brilliant, everyone on the tour was a backpacker. The food was great and our swags (a kind of canvas sleeping bag) for sleeping in were very comfortable. There were 21 people on our tour ranging from Kiwi's, British, Germans, Japanese, French and Italian.
Day 1. Got picked up at 6am and drove for about 5 hours to get to Kings Canyon. Then during the hot part of the day we walked the Canyon walk route. There were two routes, the easy one and the difficult one, we ended up doing the easy one as Sarah could not handle the heat at all, today it was about 48degrees in the Canyon down at the lower level and in the mid 50's at the upper levels so quite hot alright. Surprisingly though the heat didn't really affect me so much but we were drinking alot of water to prevent dehydration. That evening we camped in the bush and slept out under the stars in our Swags around a camp fire - which was good fun and a spectacular view of the Milkyway.
4th October
Day 2. Up at 5.30am and drove to Kata Tjuta and the valley of the Winds, We walked a circuit of about 6.5km in 35degree heat in the morning then returned to Yulara for lunch and a swim before going to Uluru (Ayers Rock). We got a history/Geology and Mythology lesson on the Rock, what absolutely mad is that only 30% of it is above ground and it goes for about 700m below ground. So we walked around part of the rock and then piled back on the bus to go to the sunset viewing point which is the postcard shot of Uluru. When we arrived there all the other companies were there with tables set up and champagne and wine for their tour people ( old rich people that paid an extra 300 dollars for their trips) despite the fact that we looked like poor backpackers we managed to wangle free glasses of wine from them for ourselves hehehe. But what was really cool was that our tour was the only tour who had dinner at the rock watching sunset. We had really good fun and it was a nice way to spend our 5th year anniversary together!
