A Weekend Visit to Uluru

Auntie Ali and I arrived to a very dinky looking airport at about 2pm and hopped on a bus to the Resort.  We stayed in the Outback Pioneer Lodge and boy were we in the outback.  They call this area the red centre because of the oxidized sand that is really red.  It was also really cool that the sand and the rock formations (Uluru and Kata Tjuta) changed colour at different times of the day.  Sometimes they were more orange or even purple.  Just wild!

We had a pretty nice room, plus it was close by to a bar with live music and the pool, both of which we made use of.  We did a bit of exploring after we dropped our bags off in our room and ended up at the little museum/art gallery in the main square of the resort.  We got there right in time for a tour of the museum, talking about the history of the area and the animals you could see around. Then we had a tour scheduled for the evening to see the Field of Light display.  We were picked up from our hotel just before the sun started setting to be taken to a private dune.  There was a first clearing where we were given sparkling wine and our first sighting of Uluru.  Truthfully, at almost every tour we took there was unlimited wine included.  Not too shabby.  But it did keep our hands full when we were trying to take pictures.

There were also several platters of canapes including prawns, cheese puffs, and kangaroo crostinis, among others.  We spent a while watching the sun go down, taking pictures, mingling, eating and drinking.

Once the sun went down, we headed to a second clearing on the dune where tables were set up for a buffet dinner.  We ate under the stars, and without any bugs! There were about eight per table and we sat with some very nice people, who we ended up seeing around  resort the rest of the weekend.  We even ate dinner with a couple from a place we hadn't heard of close to Melbourne.  Most of our table was made up of Australians.  But, it was a very common thing to recognize people from different tours around the resort.  In fact, we sat next to a family of four on the flight over, saw them on two tours, then were on the same flight back to Sydney.  It was a very cool atmosphere because the resort is like a small community in itself.

The buffet had so much good food; over three types of salad, chicken, kangaroo loin, beef.   Of course, in good buffet etiquette, I took a little bit of everything.  We had a waiter for our table who never let our wine glasses go empty and was so nice.  There was a didgeridoo player to create the ambiance too!

Photo Credit: Alison Roy (Auntie Ali)

After dinner, they turned out all of the lights to expose the most incredible milky way.  Then one woman did a small star talk to point out the interesting stars and planets with one of those extra strength laser pointers.  I think I remember her pointing out Venus and maybe Jupiter.  But, I could very well be making that up.  It was amazing regardless.  Once the lights were turned back on, it was time for the dessert buffet, complete with a glass of port.  The meal was so filling and delicious!

To complete the night, we had about 45 minutes to walk through the Field of Light, which was an art installation with over 50,000 colour-changing lights set up in a field that you can walk through.  It was a fantastic sight. My pictures don't really capture its awe-inspiring affect, but I'm sure you could google better ones.

After the Field of Light, the buses took us back to the hotel and we hit the hay.  The next morning we did a Desert Awakening tour.  Our tour guide Toby picked us up bright and early (5:35am) in a huge 4W bus thing, which was awesome in itself, to take us to yet another private dune to see the sunrise.  Here's the bus just for kicks:

No word of a lie, the picture on the license plate is a
crocodile eating a pelican.

From this dune, they fed us a nice breakfast and coffee (thank god) as we watched the sun come up.  We ate bacon and egg rolls, as well as danishes and damper with golden syrup (more or less tasted like pancakes). Some sunrise pictures:

The gorgeous colours definitely made the early wake up call worth it.  Actually, sunrise/sunset pictures are the bread and butter of any trip to the area.  They were quite magical.  After the sun rose, Toby took us for a drive all around the perimeter of Uluru, and told us the stories of the sacred rock formation from the Anangu peoples of the area, including that of the lizard man, the Mala man, and the serpent Lira.  We had a couple of stops to get out and walk about the base of the rock.  We opted not to climb it for two reasons: it is considered disrespectful to the Anangu and it looks hella scary to do.

Not sure if you are able to zoom in, but the speck in the middle is actually two people.

Not to worry, there will be plenty more pictures of Uluru, after all we were there for three full days to see it.  While still on this tour, we also stopped in to the Cultural Centre and souvenir shops before driving back to the hotel for a much needed nap (well just me, Auntie Ali walked around the hotel more).

Just randomly, I was completely fascinated by the cloud formations that day.  It moved completely in one sheet:

The clouds stayed in a perfectly straight line the entire morning.

After a bit of a restful afternoon, we headed off for another sunset viewing of Uluru.  There is actually a designated parking lot for sunset viewing, so more or less the entire resort was there.  Once again we had sparkling wine and snacks (well only crackers by the time we got to the table; people devoured them). 

Cheers!

Purple/pink sunset

We ran into the couple that we sat beside the night before at the Field of Light and arranged to eat dinner with them later.  We went to the bar with live music, which was just a man with his guitar, but he was excellent! We had pizza and chatted. It was a fantastic night.

Guess what that is?

The next morning, we went on the Uluru sunrise and base walk tour.  It was another early rise, but still so great.  We started off on the 12 km base walk and had a very passionate guide named Macca. He told us about the history of the area, the injustices against the Anangu people, the Anangu stories about Uluru, and the different flora and fauna.  It was a very educational walk as he told us how the area was used for bomb testing, the events surrounding the land "hand back" on the condition that the park be leased back to the government, and pointed out all of the plants.  More or less all of the plants and animals as far as the eye could see was used for some purpose by the local peoples, either for food or weaponry.  The ones that stuck in my mind were the spinifex grass used for glue and the honey ants.  Here is a series of photos along our hike:

Thats Auntie Ali

We stopped for breakfast about halfway into the hike.  They had hot coffee and a breakfast bag with cereal, fruit, and trail mix.  They even provided little stools for us to sit on while we ate.  Then we headed off on the rest of the hike.  We saw some rock art, a little watering hole, and more of the incredible caves that line the whole rock.

The Mala man

It was a beautiful sunny and warm day. The hike was stunning and we had a great time learning and hanging out with the other people on the walk.  We did have to be a little careful not to fall behind because we were taking so many pictures.  But we made it and got the certificate of achievement at the end to commemorate walking the entire base of Uluru.  Before we headed back to the hotel for a short dip in the freezing pool, we had a surprise visit by this guy:

It's well camouflaged, but there is a juvenile snake, which Macca told us was highly venomous!

 This was effectively our last visit to Uluru. So, I am sure he was just bidding us farewell.  I just realized that I didn't put any pictures of us on the hike, so here is some proof:

Girls trip!

As mentioned, we went for a dip in the pool when we got back to the hotel.  It was like ice water but we braved it because it was a very hot day.  In all honesty, I also didn't stay in very long because there was a shadowy corner that I was somewhat convinced could have a crocodile lurking.  We dried off and walked back to the main square of the resort for more souvenirs.  We also stopped to listen to a bush yarn talk, which was a showing of some of the weapons used by the local Anangu, including boomerangs, spears, and the tool used for throwing the spears.  The man giving the talk was very entertaining and had personal stories of his family using these instruments and hunting animals.  For example, his grandmother walking barefoot through water and grabbing snakes with her bare hands. It was a very interesting talk.  We then took another tour to see the sunset.  This time, though, we went to Kata Tjuta, otherwise known as the Olgas.  Of course, there was more wine and snakes (oops typo, I meant snacks).   

Finally, that fire red colour that I thought Uluru/Kata Tjuta looked like all of the time.

Apparently only 20% of people who visit the park go to visit Kata Tjuta.  Everyone just sticks to seeing Uluru.  That is just silly if you ask me.  It was another beautiful sight and the sun really played up the red the night we went to see the Olgas, more so than when we saw the sunset on Uluru.

This more realistically shows you all of the views I saw.  My face was glued to my camera.

This was also the point where my heart absolutely broke.  I went in my camera bag to change my lens, but when I went to pull out my zoom lens, I heard broken glass.  Not a sound you want to hear.  So I was super bummed.  But, I later found out that it was just the protective lens that I added to the end and it still works fine.

Back to Yulara.  We finished off the night by having dinner at the hotel bar and going on a brief walk to a lookout point to take pictures of the milky way.  Despite being only a couple hundred meters, maybe even less (I am bad at judging distance), from the hotel, the lookout was pitch black and the stars were great.  We weren't the only ones with that idea, but everyone was very quiet and kept their lights off to see the stars.  Not to brag, but I am getting better at taking milky way shots.  It is a process; I look forward to the day that I can take the most amazing star shot ever.  This was not that day, but I'm getting there.

The next day we had a slow morning, getting a really nice breakfast at the the Kulata Academy Cafe.  We took a last look around the shops and the resort before we had to head to the airport to get back to Sydney.  It was an absolutely incredible trip with great views, great company (thanks Auntie Ali!), and another check off of my Australian tourism to-do list.

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