The Rest of It

It's Boxing Day here in Oz, (that's the day after Christmas for all the Americans out there) and while Dom watches the Dallas Cowboys I thought I would finish up our Uluru/Alice Springs recap so that I can delve into the Jamaica trip from more than a month ago and our weekend trip houseboating on the Hawkesbury River and also tell you about the Opera House...all before we leave tomorrow for Melbourne (I can almost guarantee that's not going to happen, but it's a nice thought). So, here we go...

Ayres Rock

The Olgas

The Road Trip

Alice Springs

First up, just as we were heading out of Alice Springs we saw a kangaroo! Yes we've seen kangaroos before but never quite as close as this! And after seeing all of the other wild animals on our road trip and not a single kangaroo...we really needed to see a kangaroo to make the trip complete. We even managed to capture the moment on video. Unfortunately Blogger does not want to load my video...so this picture where the kangaroo is barely visible will have to suffice. She's up at the top of the pic between the rocks, can you see her?

The road trip back was much less exciting as we took the shorter route and managed to do the whole thing in just over 4 hours. Here are the highlights:

Emus at a petrol station.

A giant frilled lizard and echidna...at the same petrol station. Because why WOULDN'T there be a giant frilled lizard and echidna at a petrol station.

A salt lake.

The Uluru lookalike.

More camels.

To be fair it was probably the same herd as we saw on the trip out, not more camels, just the same camels again.

This is a dingo. It's a crap picture I know, but I promise in the very middle of the picture is a dingo.

And here's the car after the roadtrip, not nearly as many bugs as we thought there should be.

Our last night in Uluru we decided to do the "Sounds of Silence" dinner, remember when we went to Port Douglas and did the "Flames of the Forest" dinner? Well, this was essentially the same thing. Dinner under the stars while watching the sun set behind Uluru. Instead of an aboriginal telling a bedtime story this time it was the most Australian guy I've ever seen playing a digeridoo.

Have you ever seen anyone look more quintessentially Australian than this guy?

Champers at sunset.

Totally worth it if you're ever in Uluru, they give you all sorts of weird Australian fare like kangaroo and crocodile and give you too much alcohol. Awesome.

As we got ready to head off the next morning we took one last trip out to Uluru before we headed back to the airport.

A closeup of the walk you can do up the side of Uluru.

And our final look. Bye bye Uluru.

Alice Springs

Ayres Rock

The Olgas

The Roadtrip

Man do I sure know how to drag out a 4 day weekend recap.

So, At long last we had made it to Alice Springs. Now a note on Alice Springs and the aboriginals. If you've never been to Australia you may think that there are just Aboriginals prancing about all over the place, but you would be wrong. I very very rarely see them...anywhere. They're not in Sydney, I saw none in Queensland or Cairns, none in the Hunter Valley and none in the Blue Mountains. Now I think I know why. I think they ALL live in Alice Springs. It was very...strange. Not because there were aboriginals there per se, but because they were there in such numbers IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE and really nowhere else.

But, back to Alice Springs. Cute, cute little town. Had we known better we would have done our trip exactly opposite of what we did. We should have flown in to Alice Springs, hung out there for a day then drove to Ayres Rock, done the whole sunset and hiking thing there and then headed back for more Alice Springs. Seriously, way more to do in Alice Springs then Ayres Rock.

So, Alice Springs first claim to fame is it's telegraph station which finally linked Oz to the rest of the world in 1872. The other claim to fame is the Royal Flying Doctor Service which is for all those who live and travel in the (decidedly unred) Red Center of Oz where there is no medical services for hundreds of miles.

The Telegraph Station is very well preserved and we totally thought we would pop in and pop out and be done with it, but ended up spending the better part of 3 hours milling about. It was pretty cool and I highly recommend it if you're ever in the area...and by in the area of course I mean if you've purposely flown to Alice Springs because there's no other way that you would randomly end up here.

Blacksmith's shop

Interesting story that I never knew, at some point the telegraph station was turned into a school for the "half-castes" all the little half european half aboriginal children that had resulted from the English taking aboriginal "mistresses". They essentially stole these children from their mothers and raised them to think of themselves as white and to marry whites or other half castes, not aboriginals. It's terrible obviously, but I think it's quite interesting that they encouraged them to be white and took them into their community rather than treating them as outcasts.

This is Dom in "school". =)

Nothing but this for hundreds of miles in all directions, pretty amazing that they ever made the telegraph station out here in the first place.

This sign for the spring in which Alice Springs took her name

.

IN the spring.

AND the Royal Flying Doctor Service! Unfortunately it didn't open until late in the afternoon and we had to get back to Uluru for our dinner under the stars...which I'll tell you about next!

The Olgas

Part 1

Though Uluru is the more famous of the two there is also another monolith just a half hour away from Uluru. The Olgas (or Kata Tjuta, the aboriginal name) are a group of 36 monoliths all clumped together. They are equally as impressive in their size and have the added bonus of being able to walk amongst and through them. And just like Uluru they are well known for their sunrise and sunset spectacularness, so at 4:30am I was dragged kicking and screaming out to the Olgas for a sunrise view and a very very early 3 hour hike.

I'm not a morning person at the best of times and especially not a morning person when it's too early for coffee because all the cafes (all 2 of them in the resort) are not open until 6am.

So, with no coffee and nothing but nuts to power me through, off we went.

5am...I'm shoving nuts into my mouth if you're wondering what I'm doing.

The Olgas

Moon still visible.

Sun finally rising at 5:38am

After the sunrise at 5:38 AM we headed off for our Valley of the Winds walk. The walk is supposed to take 3 hours and we did it in about 2.5 hours. In all honesty as much as I hate mornings it was good to get up and going before the heat of the day. I was actually even a bit chilly when we started out.

To me this sign says follow the path and you will fall and die. Unfortunately you have to follow the path...very confusing sign.

So, we followed the path. Luckily we did not fall down and die.

The landscape looks like Mars here...or what I imagine Mars to look like.

Sun flares are pretty.

This is me shooing away flies.

Oh the flies! The flies were miserable. They come at you as soon as you step out of your car and THEY WILL NOT LEAVE YOU ALONE! We bought bugspray which helped to some extend...but not really.

And to round off the excursion, some critters well adapted to the red environment.

Red lizard.

Red grasshopper.

To be continued with our road trip...

Ayres Rock

...or as it is now known by it's Aboriginal name, Uluru.

As I've mentioned before we had absolutely no plans to ever visit Uluru until we read Bill Bryson's book Down Under and then did a full 180 and decided it would be silly of us not to go. The other convenient fact about going to Uluru is that we would also get to see the red center of Oz and the proper "Outback", something that few Australians ever actually get around to doing. Much like very few New Yorkers ever go up the Empire State Building (myself included), something about being able to do it whenever you want keeps you from every doing it.

Anyway, one other small part of why we decided to go ahead and make a trip to Uluru is that both Virgin Blue (Australian version of Virgin America) and Qantas now have flights going to Uluru daily, which means you don't have to fly to Alice Springs and drive 6 hours to get to Uluru anymore...which we ended up doing anyway, but that was by choice not by necessity.

So, off to Uluru we went, a quick 3 hour flight from Sydney and a one and a half (yes HALF) hour time difference behind and we were in Uluru just an hour and a half after we took off. Which left us the WHOLE day in 90 some odd degree heat with nothing for miles and miles around but Uluru and it's resort.

Oh the resort.

Now I've mentioned before that they use the term resort here very loosely, a resort is not a massage laden pamper fest, it means motel.

Unfortunately everything in Uluru is owned by one company, Voyages, there is literally nothing for hundreds of miles around Uluru except 5 hotels and a campsite all owned by this one company. It's shameful really. So, you're forced to stay in a Voyages owned property no matter what you do, otherwise you have to drive to Alice Springs, which as I said is 6 hours away through the middle of nothing. Luckily all of the hotels are in different price points, so you're not forced to pay a certain amount, but these prices are SHAMEFUL! The most expensive is somewhere in the $400-$500 range and the least expensive is in the $250-$300!!! Then you can move on down the line to hostels and dormitories where you share rooms and showers, a bit more reasonable at $180 for a 4 bed room and then at the bottom of the price totem we have...CAMPING! So, you bet your ass we went camping.

LOL.

It wasn't quite the camping you're thinking of, though we tried, we were booked for one night in what they have deemed a Cabin, which is a very tiny 2 bedrooms with a sink and a fridge, no bathroom. We were also booked for one night in a "Village Tent" which sounded completely awesome and we were uber excited for, but then when we got there they told us the Tents were having door problems and thus we ended up in a cabin with no bathroom for 2 nights. BUT, it was only $150/night, WHICH IS A MUCH MORE REASONABLE PRICE, even if we did have to go on a short walk to use the loo. Honestly I don't mind paying a bit for a fancy hotel room, but come on, THESE ARE NOT FANCY! They're crap to be honest and the most expensive one probably wasn't even worth as much as the cheapest one, complete ripoff.

Moving on.

It was entirely too hot to venture out to the rock in the heat of the day, so we took a swim and wandered around the rest of the resort until the temps finally dropped a bit and then we headed off to Uluru to do a bit of wandering as well as catch our first sunset. If you don't know about Uluru it's the sunset and sunrise that are supposed to be breathtaking and what it's well know for. The rock supposedly turns a magnificent shade of red and glows. Not to put a downer on the whole experience but after seeing so many pics of it glowing this magnificent shade of red I was slightly disappointed to see it in person...though it does turn out quite magnificent in the pictures I was not blown away by it.

Hours before sunset...it's just a big rock. Though it is rather incredible that it's out in the middle of nowhere like it is.

There's a waterhole.

And cave art.

Sitting in the back of the car waiting for sunset.

Sitting on the car waiting for sunset.

And that's about as much as it glowed...

Anti-climatic isn't it? Yeah, i thought it would be...redder I guess. Anyway, it was still beautiful, good times. Next up we go on a road trip across the red center!