OO-LOO-ROO (Australia)

The trip to Uluru, was not nice and easy.  In the evening, we flew to Sydney, where we had to spend the night until the next morning.  As you know, we’ve had our fair share of crappy nights of sleep and a few overnight airport stays, but this one was the worst.  The whole airport actually closes, so they confine everyone in this teenie area with limited seating.  Each chair has a metal armrest separating it from the next, so no lying down.  There were a lot of people sleeping on the ground, which was probably the smarter decision, but the prize went to the girl who actually curled up into a ball and slept on her suitcase, which was on a luggage trolley.  At 4am, I couldn’t sleep anymore, and just played around on the internet (thank God there was at least internet), until about 7am when we made our way back to our terminal.  The flight itself was fine, and we got in a little bit of shut eye.  We made it into Uluru mid-afternoon.
We had only scheduled about 24 hours in Uluru, so we had to book it.  Uluru, or Ayers Rock as the white conquerors dubbed it, is…well, jeez it sounds lame like this…a big rock.  Yes, it’s really just one huge rock in the middle of nowhere.  But, it’s pretty neat, I swear.  The dirty in that area of Australia is red, so the rock itself is red.  It, and a rock formation close to it called Kata Tjuta, are the only land formations for maybe a couple hundred miles.  It’s a very significant Aboriginal landmark, and the area is still inhabited by Aboriginal tribes.  There isn’t much to do in that area, and a very…very small town has formed to handle the tourists in a sustainable way, as the area was being degraded.  When we landed, we went to the center of town and the Information Site to figure out our options.  We got our maps and headed out to Uluru.  We drove the entire circumference of the rock, did a short trek to one of the gorges, and got to learn a little about the Aboriginal tribes in the area.  The walk was nice, but pretty hot and INFESTED with flies!!  Worse, I think, than any place to which we’ve been.  One of the most popular activities there is to watch the colors of Uluru change to a vibrant red as the sun both rises and sets.  As we were approaching sundown, we hightailed it to sunset lookout point and set up shop. Small world, all the fancy camera guys from the 12 Apostles were there too!  To be honest, I’ve seen some photos of Uluru at sunset, and it is awe inspiring, so as we were watching I kept expecting that National Geographic photo opt, but it kinda never happened.  I just sort of kept expecting it to get brighter and brighter and more and more vibrant, and then after a certain point it started becoming less and less of both, which was when I realized that was the whole shebang.  Anyway, we did get in our shots, and then headed back to the town area for dinner.  As the town was teeny, and there wasn’t much threat of anything, we decided to just park and sleep. 
The next morning, we woke up at the *bleep* crack of dawn to watch the sunrise.  I think we forgot to adjust our clocks correctly though, because we woke up way before everyone else, and actually ended up taking a little catnap there.  We finally woke up as the tour-bus-tourists started piling in and found our spot along with everyone else.  I was prepared this time for a slightly less spectacular view than Google portrayed, but again, it was a very pretty sight none-the-less.  After the sun was fully up in the sky, and the colors of the rock settled, we made our way back to the car, ate breakfast and headed over to Kata Tjuta.  We were able to get in a nice hour hike and lunch before having to pack up shop and head back to the airport.  Our last stop, Sydney!