Through the Middle

Part 1 - Ayres Rock

Part 2 - The Olgas

After our early morning hike we hit the road. If you google directions from Uluru to Alice Springs you can see that it's a mere 460 km away, which if you drive fast is about a 5 hour drive. BUT, while googling Dom discovered there is ANOTHER way to Alice Springs that involves several hundred kms of unsealed (in the US we just call them DIRT) roads, making the trek 640 kms and approx 8 hours. So you just know we took the long way.

This is our car at the beginning of the journey, relatively bug free.

I just love Australian signage. This was definitely one of my favorites for 2 reasons. First, this sign is in the middle of nowhere, if you'd made it this far WITHOUT driving on the left that would be some feat. The second is of course that fact that it specifies "in Australia", as though you could be anywhere else but Australia....there's not another country for hundreds of miles...

Anyway.

Before we even made it to the dirt road we stumbled upon our first of many wild animals.

Wild Camels!

I had no idea there were wild camels in Australia! They were just crossing the road...hanging out. Very cool.

The red road is the long road. And our chosen route through the Red Center.

The only thing for miles and miles were these tiny little "towns" that consisted of exactly what you see here. Toilets, showers, possibly a restaurant, campsites...and emus. Ha!

Little sidenote here...from the time we stepped into our car we were plagued by suicidal birds. That's right I said Suicidal Birds. Have you ever plagued Angry Birds before:

source

That's what we had on our hands....Angry Birds. They would be sitting along the side of the road or in the road, NEVER IN THE TREES and as soon as the car was anywhere near them REGARDLESS OF WHETHER THEY ACTUALLY NEEDED TO MOVE OR NOT they would dive headfirst TOWARDS THE CAR! It was ridiculous. Sometimes they would fly out of the way and then immediately turn around to FLY BACK INTO THE CAR. At first I was completely traumatised after we'd hit one or two, BUT THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO! I don't know how many we hit, but after the first 3 you just sort of accepted it. Poor little suicidal birds.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love bones? If this life of mine had turned out differently I would be a forensic anthropologist. Whoever decided to put skulls on a stick in the middle of nowhere is awesome.

And then...our second wild animals...Wild Horses!

We love our wide angle lens...and our timer. Ha.

And more wild animals...a skink! At least I think it's a skink, I saw a sign somewhere about skinks back in Uluru and since we saw about 10 of these along our drive I decided they must be skinks.

And even though it's called Red Centre Way and the middle of Australia is called The Red Center, this has been the wettest year in 70 years and the middle of Australia was decidedly...unred. Other than the unsealed road which you can see from the piccies is quite clearly red the vegetation was green and downright lush! Not exactly how I was imagining it to look.

And then just as we were about to hit Alice Springs after a LONG day of driving, we encountered this:

As I said it's been a really wet year! But not to be deterred by a river in the road Dom made the executive decision to ford the river...I was not so sure about this decision but since the only other road going to Alice Springs was a good 2 hours behind us we went for it. Obviously we survived the fording of the river, but again, not what you'd expect to see in the middle of Australia!

Next we finally make it to Alice Springs...

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!

Into the Blue

We're back from Singapore but unfortunately Dom is traveling ALL week. The traveling thing is getting a little ridiculous, seeing as how we moved here partly to get away from the crazy amounts of travel that was being required of Dom while we were in the US and now he's almost traveling more...it's not good. (Especially if we're going to make a baby, Dom has to actually be around enough to make the baby!)

But let's rewind.

Two weekends ago we took a very spur of the moment trip a few hours west of Sydney to the Blue Mountains. Honestly I would hesitate to actually call them mountains, they're more like hills, but the vastness of these hills is amazing, stretching on and on as far as the eye can see.

It rained on us again, much like our last bushwalk, and it also rapidly started to get dark, so we had to rush through the sights, but as soon as warmer weather and longer days are upon us we'll make a weekend trip out of it and head back to the Blue Mountains.