Ayers Rock

The last couple days have been absolutely amazing and VERY hot!!! I flew in to Ayers Rock on Thursday Morning, dropped my bags in storage at the hostel and headed to the landmark Uluru (or Ayers Rock for the non-aborigines). Basically it is a massive rock, 9.4 km in circumference and 348 m high (taller than the Eiffel tower I learnd), and as the earths plates were settling way back the whole rock rotated 90 degrees so you can see the earths layers vertically all across it. The rock has both a base walk, around 10 km that tourists can do and there is also the "climb" which is a steep hike up the side of the rock to the highest point on it. There are signs everywhere telling people "Do not climb Uluru as it is a sacred ritual for the local Aboriginal men." Talking to our driver on the way in, he said alot of people, including himself but it is a very physically demanding hike so it is only really open to a select population of people. As we arrived at the base camp I was very unhappy to find the rock climb closed because of high winds but my driver said sometimes they re-open it later in the day if the wind's died down. I started off doing the base walk and quickly found out how brutal the flies can be in the Outback. They were everywhere and basically swarmed people that arrived, going for their face and ears. As bad as they were, I was determined to enjoy the walk and certainly did as the walk was full of stopping points with legends of how different features of the rock came to be. The entire walk took me about 2.5 hours and as I made my way back to the start I was thrilled to see that the climbing hike was re-opened. Let me tell you that this may have been the steepest hike I have ever done, and the first 1/3 of it had a chain handrail and some points had to have been very very close to an 80 degree incline!! After I reached the end of the chain handrail section I was clueless to the continuation of the trail and starting snapping pictures in celebration. The flies were equally bad at the top than they were at the bottom so I was ready to begin the trek down when I happened to notice some paint markings off to the side which showed me there was another long section of the trail that took you further up. Boy I woulda felt like a complete dummy not seeing that..... Anyways, the rest of the climb was an up and down climb but nowhere near the steepness of the first part and I was absolutely amazed at the view when I finally got to the top. This may be one of the most breathtaking things I have every seen in my life, the endless red sand, sparse vegetation and distant hills put every other care in life out the way for those few moments I was up there. To anyone who ever travels to Australia, you absolutely have to climb Ayers Rock if the opportunity arises.
I climbed back down the rock, and am still (2 days later) feeling it in my calves. At the bottom I had just enough time to head over to the Visitor's centre where I got the downlow of the whole story behind Uluru's mysterious legend and picked up a few locally made souveneirs. Then when I thought the day just couldn't get any better, our driver took us to a lookout for the infamous Uluru sunset where we experienced the sun setting behind us, casting eery shadows and putting on a crazy colour show of the entire Ayers Rock. During the day the rock is almost a yellow/orangy colour but as the sun set it turned to a deep orange, then dark red and finally a rusty brown, all within the timespan of about 15 minutes. We got taken back to Ayers Rock Resort which is a resort owned by one company and has 5 different hotels/campgrounds/hostels and is about 20 minutes from the Ayers Rock Resort. The hostel had about 30 beds but only 3 were filled during my stay and they had the best facilities of any places I've been to yet.

The next morning I was up at 5:30 and another shuttle picked me and 4 other people up to see the Golga's sunrise. The Golga's are the second part of the Uluru park which is comprised of about 60-70 big rocks (as tall as Uluru) and are about 45 minutes from the Ayers Rock resort. We got to the sunrise lookout and watched as the sun rose just next to Uluru and brought the Golga's to life with another neat array of colours. I apparently got trigger happy with my camera and took about 50 pictures from the lookout, but it was just so picturesque. Next we were taken to a hiking route in the Golga's and did the route in about 3 hours stopping a couple of times to see the landscape and scout out any Kangaroos. Apparently if you're there early in the morning (which we were) there is a very good chance fo seeing them but we had no luck that morning. The hike was almost equally as neat as Uluru but we had a strict departure time to work with so our time there was very limited.

Back at the resort I had the afternoon to catch up on some sleep and check out the local resort visitors centre with history on its construction and future designs. Whoever runs the place is a genius because they have the only rights in the area to build hotels so people have no choice but to stay at the Ayers Rock Resort, brilliant design scheme. On the flipside since only 1 person owns the place everything is overpriced and I didn't go on the internet there due to the $1/6 min rate which I thought was absurd. I met this guy who checked into the hostel earlier in the day and he told me all about his 18 month world trip which made my 3.5 week stay look so miniscul. One day I hope to do a longer trip like that, sounds like some crazy fun.

This morning I was on a 10:15 flight out of Ayers Rock and stopped over in the neighbouring city Alice Springs before getting to Melbourne around 3 pm. I checked into the Greenhouse Backpackers, a perfectly located place in the heart of Melbourne and headed over to the IceArena for a hockey game played by the local Melbourne Ice. Keith Seckington a friend, plays for their team and I was planning on catching their home opener tonight but as I got to the gates, they told me the game was sold out. You can't even imagine how bummed I was about it, I ended up walking just under an hour to get to the arena and then get locked out..... Not to be completely let down, I decided to tour around the dockside area nearby and was surprised to pass a Costco which I thought only existed in North America.

Tomorrow I head to St. Kilda, a small town to check out their beach and hunt through their weekly market for any neat souveneirs. The forecast calls for rain tomorrow but my fingers are crossed it will hold off until the evening. The internet is free here at the Greenhouse so I'll definitley be checking in regularly. All for now,