uluru part three

Day Three--Kata Tjuta

(For more info on Kata Tjuta, click here.)


If I had to choose one word to describe day three in the Outback, it would have to be "PREPOSTEROUS!" If I could choose another word, it would be "wet." And if I had a third, it would be "breathtaking." A strange combination of adjectives, day three brought us to Kata Tjuta, also known to Westerners as The Olgas.

That morning we woke up, rolled up our swags, and ate breakfast before jumping into the van for another day in the Outback. Looking out the window, we watched the sun rise over the desert. We spotted a couple of feral (wild) camels a hundred meters from the road. Apparently the Australian Outback is the only place left in the world where wild camels live. Some of the best Australian racing camels are sold to the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, for participation in camel races that often have cash prizes of millions of dollars. Our guide, Dan, was training for a camel race in Saudi Arabia in August. (If you couldn't tell by now, I had a huge crush on Dan the entire trip because he was your quintessential rough and tough highly masculine Aussie outback guy.)

We arrived at the start of the Kata Tjuta trail early in the morning, and the sky was already darkening with the oncoming rain clouds. I donned my awesome hat, stuck all of my valuables in my über-cool fanny pack, and stuffed some bottles of water and crackers into a reusable bag that I had claimed from Paddy's market. Jumping out of the van, I thought to myself, "Hmm, maybe bringing all this stuff with me is a mistake... it looks like it's about to rain." Nevertheless, I didn't want to leave all my valuables in the van while we were gone, so I arrived at start of the trail with my ipod, cell phone, wallet, and camera on me.

The walk through Kata Tjuta is known as the "Valley of the Winds." (I found this inspiring immediately since my favorite anime film is Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.) As we were being briefed by Dan, however, it suddenly started pouring rain. We gathered under a round roofed hut to finish our briefing, and Dan and this hardcore European hiking couple headed off towards the trail in the pouring rain before me or any of my friends could ask Dan to unlock the van so we could put our stuff back inside. I distinctly remember looking at one my friends at that moment, and all we could do was shrug at each other helplessly before heading off in the pouring rain towards the majestic Kata Tjuta.

Take a moment to realize that this is the middle of the Outback, characterized by no rain and absolutely no moisture in the air. Just in the last post I was telling you how I was suffering from heat exhaustion and how the flies were seeking cool solace DOWN OUR THROATS. The walk through Kata Tjuta, however, was wet and chilly. And we were told that it only rains in the Outback once every few years. Preposterous! Totally turned my concept of the Outback on its head.

It's hard to describe exactly how hard it was raining as we were walking. You know when you're in Boston and it suddenly comes raining down in a TORRENT, out of the middle of NOWHERE, and it continues for about five or six minutes before it stops and clears up into beautiful sunshine? That's how it was at Kata Tjuta, except instead of a flooding rain lasting six minutes, it lasted about twenty six. Imagine twenty minutes of pounding, *relentless* rain falling from the heavens!

The fact that the trail was just a cleared path of gritty red rocks and gravel didn't help the trek. Everything was flooded with water, including the trails. In fact, at some points the water came up past my ankles, and my sneakers were soaked through in a matter of seconds. Walking on the trail was also treacherous, since rocks were slippery under our feet and stones shifted with the flowing water so that no patch of land was 100% safe to walk across. At one point in the trail, it was a steep, rocky downward descent that was so unsafe that my friends and I slowly inched our way down.

Meanwhile, the rest of my body was also having a hard time keeping dry. I was only wearing a WHITE thin cotton t-shirt, a Calvin Klein wireless black bra, soffe shorts and underwear, and I was soaked through to the bone immediately. My shirt became nearly transparent and was plastered all over me in a potentially sexy way, except under my shirt I had tucked in my camera (inside its case) and my fanny pack (containing my cell phone, ipod, and wallet) so that it looked like I had a fanny-pack-shaped tumor growing under my shirt. I also clutched my reusable Paddy's Market bag against my chest OVER my shirt so that the rain wouldn't get in.

The rain on Kata Tjuta was so incredibly beautiful and the the water cascaded over the rocks in stunning waterfalls, but the entire time I was thinking "@#$% ^&*@# %^$* My stuff is going to get ruined!"

A photo from a friend who actually was brave enough to take her camera out during the rain! Look at all the waterfalls!!!!

It was wet, wet, wet!

The rain eventually calmed down and the fog lifted over the mountains. Here are some "after" pictures. The entire place was breathtaking.

Having survived the rainstorm. Happily, my head was kept dry during the entire storm because of my uber-sweet hat. But check out how my shirt is drenched and nearly transparent. My shirt was SO heavy with rain that my bra was compromised in this picture! (The green bag is the reusable bag I was referring to--it's made of a material that's a cross between cloth and plastic.) Also check out the badass fog.

It rained so heavily that creeks suddenly emerged where there used to be no water. This is a picture of our group crossing one of those newly formed creeks. These new creeks would be the site of frog spawning. Dan told us that there is a certain species of frog that digs underground and secrets tons of quick-drying mucus that envelops them entirely in a hard mucus shell. When water from rainstorms seeps down into the ground, the mucus casing around the frogs soften and they awake to come up to mate. All around us were the sounds of frogs calling to each other. It was deafening but so cool to hear.

Within minutes after the rain stopped, the sun came back out and blazed brightly. My clothes dried within minutes! The waterfalls dried up quickly, too, but I was able to snag one good photo:

Waterfall on Kata Tjuta

Back to blue skies, red earth, and the need to wear sunglasses!

Happily enough, none of my electronics got ruined. In fact, hardly anything of mine got wet. Somehow the combination of cradling my stuff under my shirt and holding a bag over it kept the rain from getting in. However, I had another friend who had her ipod and cell phone inside her backpack and even used an UMBRELLA, but both her cell phone and ipod were wet beyond repair. The Outback is utterly INSANE. As my friend said, "Who the hell would expect rain in the middle of the desert?"

It's a strange and preposterous world.

A "before" picture of Kata Tjuta.

An "after" photo.

That afternoon we went to an Aboriginal cultural center to have lunch and learn more about the Aboriginal stories of Kata Tjuta and Uluru. Halfway through the cultural center, more shit went down! Reports of a hail storm had reached the center, and our guide Dan yelled at us to get back into the van so that we could reach our campsite and prepare for the hail.

HAIL, in the middle of the desert? What the hell?! But nothing was quite beyond our comprehension after the rainstorm that morning. We were still confused and nervous, but we crowded back into the van and drove to our campsite. This time, the campsite was a real place, complete with roofed pavilions, picnic tables, and even a bathroom with a bunch of shower stalls. And.... a laundry room. Dan told us that most groups passing through lay their swags down on the ground outside, but because of the hailstorm this wouldn't be safe enough. So... we were told to covertly take over the laundry room and lay our swags down there before the other tour groups got the same idea. Taking over the laundry room wasn't TECHNICALLY allowed, but it would keep us dry and warm for the crazy weather ahead.

So imagine a group of 20 people rushing out of the van and grabbing their swags and running to put them down into a cramped and dusty laundry room. It was an insane and hilarious frenzy!!! Meanwhile, Dan was busy throwing up a bunch of tarps over the bus and attaching them to one side of the picnic table pavilions in the hopes of creating more shelter for us--because he thought surely not ALL of us could fit in the laundry room. (He was wrong.) Well, even after the tarps were all up (attached in some places with duct tape and bungee cords), there was absolutely NO hail.... there was some rain as we were eating our dinner of Asian stirfry, but there was NO HAIL!! As a group we had worked so hard to create a shelter for ourselves, but the weather was fine throughout the night. It was really pretty funny, looking back on it.

Despite the lack of bad weather, we slept in the laundry room that night in our sleeping bags (which had a bunch of dead termites in them from the previous night, I might add). All 20 of us managed to fit into that cramped room, and Dan slept in the aisle of the van. Come to think of it, the crazy badass European couple might have chosen to sleep outside just to show us how crazy badass they were.

And that's how we ended day three of the Outback: smooshed inside a laundry room and so exhausted that we fell asleep at 9PM.

Preposterous, wet, breathtaking... does that about cover it?