Australia 2010: Ayers Rock
And so we arrived to Alice Springs. The trip on the train (The Ghan) across the desert was a 24-hour experience that we won't forget. Both the sunset and the sunrise were extremely beautiful, and the train was really in the middle of nowhere when crossing the vast outback. Ayers Rock is the name of the area that beholds the famous Uluru. However, Alice Springs is the only city in the red center, and it is about 500km away from Ayers Rock, so Marc and I took a flight there. But I will tell a little bit before that..
We had about three hours at Alice Springs, so we went shopping and had lunch there at a terrace. Marc bought plenty of souvenirs, while I just bought a few and things for myself. At lunch time, we saw, by coincidence, Iris and Mirjam (the dutch girls from Litchfield). It was nice to see them, and there were other people that came down from Darwin to Alice Springs. Somehow, this was the same story as with the East Coast, but this time happening at the outback, right at the red center.
We took our flight from Alice Springs, which was only 45 minutes, and arrived to Ayers Rock ready to take a hired car. From the tiny airport to the Ayers Rock resort, there were only 5 kilometers. We passed the resort and went straight to the Kata Tjuta National Park, where Uluru lays (together with the Kata Tjuta rocks). To make up for the sunset, we drove first to the Kata Tjuta rocks, and we left Uluru for the end of the evening.
The evening was quite wet. It was pouring from the sky and we didn't know if we were going to have a good picture from Uluru. Our plan was to see the sunset, and the next morning come back to the park and see the sunrise. After all, our plane was leaving to Melbourne the next morning, so we didn't have time at all.
Kata Tjuta was massive. Already on the way to Kata Tjuta, Uluru showed itself through the trees on every curve, and it was getting bigger and bigger after every new turn on the road. However, as we didn't expect Kata Tjuta to be so impressive, we were almost shocked by its size and the nice forms the rocks were creating, looking like all resting on the side of another rock.
After observing the structure of Kata Tjuta, we moved to Uluru. We arrived just in time. The rain stopped for a while and the sunset got started, although the sun was mostly covered behind the clouds. We took trillions of pictures (from which I picked one or two..) and we went with the car around the rock. This formation is so immense, that you cannot imagine it in real size until you are there. And, even though it looks like a huge heap of sand, it is a one-piece solid red rock.
At night, after visiting Uluru, we went to the resort. The room was shared, but there was nobody. The restaurant was very expensive (about 50€) and the rooms weren't cheap either. We ate some fast food and we went to rest. Our plan was to wake up very early in order to catch the sunrise at Uluru. One detail I forgot to tell is that, at the red center (including Alice Springs), the temperature was quite low. In fact, during the day topped 25 degrees Celsius, but at night it reached zero degrees Celsius (and sometimes even below zero).
The next morning we picked our stuff and went to the Uluru. It was night still, and we parked right on a stop marked as the sunrise lookout. The place was full of cars, buses and people, already set with their cameras and tripods, ready for the sun to come out and bathe the rock with its rays. I set my tripod and talked with an Englishman for some minutes before the sun rose. Marc got lost to some hidden lookout to take grab some shots.
When the sun was up and shining, the people started to leave the place and we went back to the airport, were we left the hired car and waited for our flight back to Melbourne. There, we had a hired car waiting and we were going to start our last trip, the Great Ocean Road. The adventure at the red center was quite short, yet intense. Having only one month to see a country as big as Europe, we had to prioritize, and so we did. Next (and last) adventure: the Great Ocean Road (from Melbourne to Warnambool and back).