Uluru / Ayer's Rock

Apologies for the less than timely post, we had no internet at Ayer's Rock (there was internet available, we just were tired of paying for it).

We arrived at Ayer's Rock last Monday. We saw it first from the plane, of course; along with what looked to be some large salt lakes (later confirmed). We got comfortable in our room and later trotted off and up the nearest sand dune lookout to watch our first sunset over Uluru. While it was interesting to watch the various shadows change on the rock as the sun went down it was not as spectacular as we had hoped. This is probably because there was not a cloud in the sky! Will include pictures. Uluru does change colors with the light - as does I suppose anything if you really look at it. One time I thought it looked like a baked potato (we hadn't had dinner yet) but my favorite is when it looked like a mound of milk chocolate.

The following morning we were up before the sun. We were driven to a remote sun dune to watch the sunrise. The guide and his cohort had a nice fire going and we, along with five others, were fed a hearty breakfast. It was FREEZING! The view was pretty striking: a flat horizon 360 degrees around with only Uluru and Kata Tjuta interrupting the horizon. Our guide then took us around the area, up and around to Uluru on some short hikes in to rock. We did not take pictures of the areas of the rock that are particularly sacred to the Anangu people (our guide told us when we could take pictures and when we couldn't). We were back by noontime. We were warned that it would be quite cold when the sun was down which is true of any desert but we were not expecting it to be so cold during the day! The sun was hot but who could sit in the sun?

The following evening we were picked up for our 'Sounds of Silence' dinner in the desert under the stars. We first had champagne and hors d'oeuvres and were treated to a digeridoo performance while we watched the sunset (I tried the crocodile pastry ones and, frankly, it did taste just like chicken). We were later ushered down around the dune to our dining area. The buffet meal was pretty good but Michael and I were both really there for the entertainment. . . after dinner, the kerosene heaters and lights were turned off and an astronomer (probably a good amateur) proceeded to point out the various constellations and other points of interest in the night sky of the Southern hemisphere. We got an incredible, vivid view of the Milky Way stretching across the sky - saw Alpha Centuri, the Southern Cross, Venus, Mercury, Mars and Jupiter. Unfortunately, this part was over more quickly than we would've liked (maybe 20% of the hundred or so being wined and dined seemed really interested in the stars; there were a larger percentage interested more in the wine, me thinks). We had not met hardly any other Americans on our trip through Australia, which we thought striking; but on this evening we sat with a engineering professor from Virginia Tech and his wife. We also sat with a lovely couple from Ireland and a couple of UK honeymooners.

Interesting note. The Austrian family we stayed with at the rainforest B&B in North Queensland, ended up being at Uluru at the same time we were. They had gone to Darwin during the time we went to Alice Springs but we ended up on the same plane to Urulu.

Pictures: if they all load properly, there will be various Uluru shots, including one close-up. We didn't take a camera for the star-studded dinner so I'll use one of their promotional photos. Bear in mind that we had pretty much no clouds in the sky and that the picture doesn't show people in their winter coats at the tables:-)