Day 39 - Start of tour numero uno

We were picked up at 05:00 by our tour driver who’d be having the pleasure of our company for the next two days. We left Alice Springs and began our very long trip to the big rock (Ayers Rock/ Uluru) stopping for food along the way.  Before we got to Uluru though we stopped at King’s Canyon (Oz’s answer to the Grand Canyon) where we had the option of two walks – a long trek or a shorter walk; but as the temperature was 45 degrees, in the shade, our guide insisted upon the short one. This was indeed ridiculously hot; the sun beat down on us all and the walk never gave us the mercy of the shade either. Our guide said he felt like it was the hottest and hardest walk here that he’d ever done and he kept telling us to keep drinking water. He also told us that someone on a tour he’d taken out a few days ago had her shoes begin to melt as the heat was almost as bad as today’s! It’s so easy to dehydrate out here and we’re definitely glad we did the shorter walk. We took in some nice views of the Canyon before heading back to the air-conditioned utopia that was our bus and its huge water dispenser!

As we’d done the short walk, our driver told us that we should be able to make it to the rock in time to witness sunset at 18:33. We did make it and the two of us grabbed a couple of beers each and set off, with the others, to go up the sand dunes there for a better view of the sunset. Unfortunately there were lots of clouds so the sun couldn’t light up the rock as it would on a day without them. The sun setting was still nice to watch and we got lots of photos of this and the rock too.

We then went back to our campsite (permanent raised tents) and had a bbq for the 13 of us in the group. There was some good food here and plenty of it as they buy enough for 24 people. We could choose from: steaks, salad etc, camel sausages, and our personal favourites… kangaroo, which was gorgeous; really tender and really tasty. Not many people liked the roo so the two of us polished as much of it off as we could.

Then it was bedtime. As we were in the middle of nowhere and it was a fairly clear night you could see all of the stars and constellations which was really nice to look at; it’s not something you often get to see back home, unless you go camping or somewhere remote.