uluru part four

Day Four and Five -- Uluru

Uluru. No more words needed. (If you click on the photo you can get the zoomed version, where you can see the rivulets of water from the rain.)

Day Four finally brought us to Uluru, also known to Westerners as Ayer's Rock. You could see Uluru from miles and miles away since it completely dominated the skyline. Literally, there was nothing but shrubs and a few sad-looking trees surrounding the area. The task of the day was to walk entirely around the imposing Uluru. Needless to say, it was a LONG walk, taking about three and a half hours. The total distance we walked was 9.8 km, which translates to 6.1 miles. But it was beautiful. And luckily it was still a little cloudy and drizzling with rain--I know I would have passed out if we had walked for almost four hours in the blazing sun.

A map of the base walk, which also shows you the shape of Uluru from above.

When recalling his trip to Uluru, travel writer Bill Bryson (who I also have a crush on) describes an eerie feeling upon seeing the rock that he says felt like a genetic pull towards the rock. He says that somehow, even if you've never seen the rock before in your life, "You know this rock."

I had that same feeling as I walked around Uluru and saw all its intricate details, including caves, small pits in the rock, Aboriginal cave paintings, and other unique formations that you can't see from mere photos. Walking the trail around Uluru, I felt some primal instinct telling me I belonged here. As if all mankind was somehow connected to this rock in the middle of nowhere. It was almost a religious feeling. I can't necessarily describe it.

One of my favorite formations was the "Wave Cave" that we're standing under in the picture above. Caused by wind being swept up and tunneled across this same cave over and over, the rock has been worn away to look like the crest of a wave.

Other famous landmarks include what looks like a giant's footprint. Aboriginal legend has passed down stories of two giant brothers who created Uluru from dirt like normal-sized kids would create a huge mud pie. When one of the brothers climbed down from his mud pie creation, he supposedly left this footprint mark.

As we walked around Uluru, there were certain sections of the trail that we were not allowed to photograph, known as "Sacred Sites." These are places where Aboriginal men and women used to conduct their rituals, and today some of these sites are still used. Fines of thousands of dollars are imposed on tourists that try to snap a photo of these sites. The thing is, the sites are no more amazing-looking than the piece of the rock before or after it. There are generally no markings on the actual rock to denote sacredness, just signs put up along the trail telling tourists not to photograph. Still, it was confusing walking around the rock and asking every five minutes, "Are we still on that sacred site or what?"

Since it'd be incredibly boring to describe every detail of the Uluru base walk to you, I'll just include a few pictures:

The texture of Uluru. Don't the pits in the rock behind me resemble human faces? VERY creepy, if you ask me!

A close-up of Uluru's texture

The walking path, surrounded by golden grasses (somewhat reminding me of Kansas!)

Waterfalls over the rock.

A (secret?) cave nestled high up in the rock.

A cave with cave paintings.

The walk around Uluru was inspiring beyond words. It was entirely different from anything I've ever done before, and the idea of a HUGE monolith stuck in the center of the desert is still hard to wrap my mind around. This was by far one of the coolest thing I've ever done in my life!

And that wasn't the end of the day.

On the ride back home from Uluru, we stopped an hour outside Alice Springs to do a camel ride at a camel farm. For a measly $5 Australian dollars, we hopped onto a camel that RAN around a paddock guided by a dude on the ground. It was such a bumpy ride, and I didn't realize how tall camels actually were until I found myself on the hump of one! I took a video of it which would be too slow to upload here, but here's a picture of me after I've disembarked from my camel, Bert?


And finally, the bus ride home:

The people on the bus (the couple in the front is the badass European couple I've mentioned a few times)

Day Five -- flying out of Alice Springs

Even though the heat was unbearable, the number of flies inconceivable, and the rain frankly unbelievable, I was sad to be leaving the Outback. It was truly the most random trip I would have in Australia (termites? torrential downpour? camels?) but probably also the most fun.

Only when I got back home to Sydney did I realize how incredibly thirsty I was on the entire Outback trip. I drank probably half a dozen Powerades and liters upon liters more water during the length of the trip, and I felt thirsty ALL THE TIME. All I can say is that the night we got back from Alice Springs I was so grateful to be in civilization again! (And then I had to pick up Andrei from the airport ten hours later.)