........................................................Barely caught my flight out of Brisbane, but made it. Had to connect through Cairns where it was pouring down so hard the roof of the airport was leaking all over the place. I dodged waterfalls for an hour then hoped on the flight to the desert. It was interesting watched the landscape change from tropical rain forest to the red dirt of the central bush over the course of 2 hours. Landing in Alice was like landing on the face of the sun. And I immediately realized that I would be spending the next two days swatting away flies. I was exhausted by the time I got to the hostel, and it was so hot I just layed in bed in kind of a delirium till dusk. I jumped in the pool to cool down then set out to town about 10 min. down the street. There wasn't much activity other that the aboriginals hanging out in the park or riding their bikes through the pedestrian mall, and a few restaurant goers. I had some spaghetti at a sports bar and then went back to bed to prepare for the early (5am) bus pick up for the Kings Canyon / Uluru tour.
The tour consisted of our guide, Yvette, and 13 other brave souls from around the world. Besides me there was a couple from Korea, two older gentlemen from Denmark, a girl from China, girl from Japan, girl from Holland, a Swiss guy, girl from Canada, and 3 lasses from Birmingham, England. Diverse and interesting crew to say the least. It was a five hour drive down to Kings Canyon and I slept for much of it, or read my book. We stopped for a Bar-B-Q on the way and got to meet each other a bit in the scorching heat. I cooked up the breaded chicken paddies, but I'm guessing I didn't even have to turn on the heat, the stainless steel pan was probably hot enough anyway. We took about a 2 hour hike around Kings Canyon, which was pretty interesting and the rock formations we great, but it was not as big as I had imagined. Yvette was very funny and had a lot of good info, plus we started to establish a kind of sarcastic relationship where she would quiz me about something and when I got it wrong she would say something like, "well, you did pretty good for a Yank." I retaliated by asking her a million infuriating questions. Anyway, we were all nearly fried by the time we got back to the bus. I sat up in the shotgun position on the 2 hour drive to Uluru. I had a good time talking to Yvette about life in Alice Springs, what it was like to be a tour guide, and then we started giving the rest of the gang riddles to solve. Then I plugged in my ipod and we had a rousing game of name that song, boys against the girls. The boys were dominating to start, but after I had thrown the girls some mercy songs they came storming back to win by one. We just made it to Uluru to see the sunset, which was awe inspiring. The silhouette of that great rock conjures up ideas of alien landings or meteors crashing to earth. Its such a unique land form it really is one of the natural wonders of the earth. We camped out that night in the heat, watching the stars and full moon.
The next we got up before dawn to get to a good spot to watch Ayers Rock "turn on" from dark grey to glowing red. Even in the down season, it was kind of a circus over there, probably 500 people all lining up with cameras ready. Even so, it was well worth it, the sudden burst of sun over the horizon set the huge mass in from of us afire and all the wrinkles, dimples, and bulges of the rock were set off my the shear shadow lines in one second, the shape changes and colors transition from deep red to almost pink. We drove around to the shady side and about half of us set out to climb the beast. It was VERY steep, and you needed the bolted in chain that ran up about 200 meters to balance and help drag yourself off. I've been on rocks like that before, but this is one big rock essentially, and if you did happen to fall, you would just keep rolling all the way down. About 5 people die per year attempting this climb. At the top it was a great 360 degree view. It was a lot of work, and we missed the hike around the base, but it was well worth it and nice to really connect with the rock and realize how big it really is. After we got down, we all met up and headed over to Kata Tjuta, another huge rock form, even taller than Uluru, and even more sacred to the aboriginal people. It consists of great cones of rock, closely spaced creating narrow canyon like spaces between. They are like great honey combs or something, very bazaar. We were all so beat down by the heat and fly's at that point I think we all would have agreed to skip it, but we forced ourselves to do a 1 hour hike up one of the canyons. After that I slept on the 5 hour drive back. I had seen some incredible sights, met some really cool people, and maybe got a new perspective on life seeing the massive scale and cruel harshness of the climate of central Australia.
