So, finally here's my Ayers Rock blog......

Wednesday 31st Aug
Was up early on Wednesday morning to meet Sue at the airport, I was really tired as I hadn’t had much sleep, but we were both really excited about our trip ahead.
The view from the plane was really amazing, the flight was 3.5 hrs and all we could see for just over 3 hours of that was desert. I knew that Australia was a big country and that the outback was vast, but seeing if for yourself it's quite unbelievable. The desert changed colour constantly, sometimes it’s red, then orange, then white, yellows and browns, but there is nothing else to see apart from desert. When we started the descent to Ayers rock I started getting really impatient to see the rock from the air….as soon as I saw what I thought was Ayers rock I shouted to Sue ‘there it is’ (a bit enthusiastically) then we weren’t sure if it was Ayers rock as it didn’t look like it…anyway I then realised it was Kata Tjuta (the Olgas, another large rock formation) it was a bit embarrassing, cos I think everyone heard me say it! Anyway, shortly after, just before we landed we did get to see Ayers rock from the sky.
We picked up our bags and got the shuttle to our hostel, there is only a population of 1000 at Uluru, so the resort was really small. On first impressions the hostel looked nice, unfortunately the dorms were 20 beds, I didn’t realise how bad this would be until later on in our trip! So we dumped our stuff and headed to the supermarket to pick up some food, then we went to the travel office to book our tours for the next few days. The rest of the afternoon we laid by the pool, it was so nice to just chill out in the warm sunshine….it stayed nice until about 6pm when the sun started disappearing. After that we walked to the Ayers rock lookout point at the hostel to watch the sunset, it was quite far away from the rock, but we got the idea of the rock changing colour, even from there. After dinner we went on a tour to the Ayers rock Observatory, I’ve been meaning to go to the one in Sydney, so I was really looking forward to this. When we arrived, we were all taken to a clearing out the back, the sky was perfectly clear so we were able to see millions of stars, the view of the Milky Way was fantastic too. After explaining to us a bit about the skies and the differences between what stars and planets you can see in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the astrologer pointed out different stars and planets including the Southern Cross with his laser pointer, which was fascinating. Then he pointed out some of the signs of the zodiac (mine wasn’t visible) I have never seen these pointed out before, so this was very interesting. He then showed us a binary star, which are 2 stars that orbit each other, and some clusters through the telescope. I really must go to the observatory in Sydney at some point.

Thursday 1st Sept
Today we were up at 5am for the sunrise tour to Ayers rock (Uluru). We went to make our breakfast and found somebody had taken most of our bread from the kitchen, which we weren’t best pleased about as we’d only just bought it! Anyway, after the tour driver faffed around picking everyone up, we finally got to the viewing point, there were already loads of people there. This was the closest we’d been to the rock so we were quite excited. After a lot of hanging around, the sun eventually came up. It was really great to watch the rock change colour, it was brown when we’d first arrived, then gradually turned bright orange, then to a terracotta colour.

After seeing this, we’d decided to do the base walk (9.4km around the whole rock). The driver dropped us off on the deserted road and pointed us in the right direction. We weren’t really sure how long it would take us to walk around it, the Lonely Planet said 5 hours, but we were going with the driver who’d said 2.5 hours. Just before we got out of the bus, the driver muttered something to us about being on this side of the rock, but neither of us could make out what he was saying.... until we got out and we realised what he'd said, the wind was really strong and pretty cold which we weren’t expecting. It was really hard work to walk against it and it didn’t really die down until after the first hour or so. It was good to do the walk, I’m glad I did it, but I must admit, I did get a little bored at some points as a lot of it is the same to look at, and there was never an end in sight!

So after about 2 hours (we walked pretty quickly) we got to the main car park which is where the area of rock is that you are allowed to climb. The climb was actually closed at this point because of the strong wind, but we didn’t mind as we weren’t going to do it anyway as we were told the rock is sacred to the Aborigines and they don’t like people climbing it. Looking at how high and steep it was, I don’t think I would want to anyway and there is only a small handrail to help you up. So we waited until 10am, then the ranger came to take us on the Mala guided tour (this was a small part which we hadn’t walked yet) The Mala are a tribe of Aboriginals, we learnt their story on the tour, which was really interesting.

After the tour, we got dropped off at the supermarket, we needed to replace our stolen bread….only to find when we got back to the hostel that someone had taken most of our milk from the fridge...how annoying!

After another couple of hours sunning ourselves (it was really baking) we went back to the rock for the sunset tour. On the way, we stopped off at the Cultural Centre for a while to learn a bit more about the Aboriginal heritage. The sunset wasn’t really the best that night as it was really cloudy, but we did see the changes to the colour of the rock…it was still good to watch, very gradual though, it was very similar to the sunrise colours, except it turned a really bright yellow at one point….considering it started off brown, it was quite something. When we got back to the hostel we were shattered, we had dinner (surprisingly there was some food left!), then to bed about 9pm.

Friday 2nd Sept

Another early start today....remind me never to stay in a dorm room with 20 beds…..I got woken up countless times, the girl next door to me was snoring so loudly it was unbelievable, then everyone got up to do their tours at about 5am, so that woke us up. After we got up, I went to the kitchen to make breakfast, wondering if we’d have any food left, this time they’d taken our pasta….I couldn’t believe it, this was the last straw, I know it’s only food, but it’s the principal….I’ve stayed in about 17 hostels over those 5 weeks I was away, and I never had anything taken…..we were both really annoyed….that was our dinner gone! Sorry, went off on a tangent then!

We were supposed to be picked up at 6.30am for our tour to the Olgas and we waited and waited but noone turned up, so 20 mins later, we went to the receptionist (after complaining to her about our stolen food!) and asked her to phone the company up for us, after us arguing that we were there on time and them saying we weren’t, they said they would come back and pick us up at 8.30, so we went back to bed again! The bus driver was very apologetic when he picked us up, they must have realised that they had left too early before, he gave us a load of postcards as an apology. On the bus drive there I spotted a camel in the wild, at first I thought I was seeing things, I didn’t expect to see a camel in Australia, then I thought maybe it had escaped from one of the camel tours….but apparently there are loads of wild camels in Australia, even more than in the Middle East!

After stopping briefly at the lookout...(below)

....we arrived at the Olgas at 9am for our first walk, the Olga Gorge walk. This one was only an hours walk and was very enjoyable, when you get to the end of the gorge and you look back, you see the amazing view of the desert. After this we were taken to the next walk, the Valley of the Winds, this was the hard walk I was dreading a bit. I must say it was far more spectacular than the Ayers rock base walk, it was really hard work, (the sign we read before listed the walk as difficult) and it was about 30 degrees, so the heat didn’t help. But we both really enjoyed it. We went off the track at one point, we were busy yakking away and not concentrating, we started getting ripped to shreds walking through dried up bushes and trees before we realised we weren't on the track anymore, luckily we hadn’t gone too far out of the way!! The views we saw were amazing, the Olgas consists of 36 large domes of rocks, it’s 546km high and has a circumference of 36km, the walk we did was 8km long, most of it uphill! We saw quite a bit of wildlife on the way too, it really was amazing to do this walk.

The Olgas

On the way back to the car park we were both shattered, our hands and our fingers had really swollen up too, I think that was the heat, very strange! We went back to the supermarket….again..to replace our stolen dinner, then we got showered, then it was pickup time for another sunset at the rock. The sunset was a lot better than the previous day, there were less clouds, I’m glad we went back and did it again.

Sunset at the rock

Sue and I

When we got back from that we had dinner, then a couple of drinks at the bar listening to some dodgy Australian singer singing Rolf Harris songs, then it was another early night….we were knackered!

Saturday 3rd Sept

After another really bad sleep ....there were a group of Asian girls who kept coming in and out of the dorm all through the night, they must have woken me up about 10 times…at one point I looked up and they were wrapping up a present…it must have been about 2am…nightmare!! So I was a bit grumpy after that through lack of sleep! We got up pretty early anyway to check out of the hostel, we had a couple of hours to spare so we had a bit of a sunbathe, it was really hot again, then it was time to go the airport for our flight back.

I had a really good time at Ayers rock, we saw lots, walked loads, and learnt heaps about the Aboriginals, I was a bit disappointed with the hostel, but the rest of the trip was a great experience.

Ariel view of Ayers rock