Uluru

On a map, Alice Springs looks fairly close to Uluru, but it turns out some 400 kilometers separate the two. I don’t really want to drive that far (and back), and here, rentals car companies charge based on distance, so all signs point to a guided tour. It’s the mother of all tours though, as our pick up time is 6am, with an expected return roughly 18 hours later.

Between Alice Springs and Uluru is pretty much nothing. The bus driver jokes that the most exciting part of the drive is that about 150 kilometers in we get to turn right. At least it seemed like a joke at the time.

Every few hours, an outpost fresh out of a Crocodile Dundee movie pops up from the desert. At the first one, Stuarts Well Roadhouse, they even have a couple of kangaroos and emus that are much more engaging than the ones at the Desert Park. Mom even gets her chance to feed one.

A few hours away from Uluru there is another formation called Mount Connor sticking up out of the ground. The guide talks about how some tourists drive themselves all the way out here from Alice Springs, figure it’s Uluru so stop and take a few photos, check a box saying they’ve seen it, and turn around to drive home. I don’t know how much truth there is to the story, but we’ve seen tourists like that in our travels and I’d like to think karma evens things up.

When we finally make it to Uluru, it quickly becomes clear that this is another one of those experiences that pictures just can’t capture. We take a ton and I’ll include some here, but they are nothing like seeing it rise out of the desert, and walking around the base, hearing tribal stories of how it was created by their spirits.

What do translate well are the ridiculous hats my fellow travelers are wearing because they are afraid of breathing in a few flies.

While Uluru gets all the PR (deservedly so as the largest monolith in the world), and admittedly is the only one I have heard about, there are a number of formations in this part of the outback. About 30 minutes further on, we stop at Kata Tjuta for our third and final hike of the day. It is over the top hot, and you can almost feel the moisture being sucked out of your body walking the kilometer or so into a gorge and back. I’m definitely dragging by the end, and how they don’t have to medi-vac out some of the older and more full-figured folks we pass along the way will always be a mystery to me.

We finish the day back at Uluru, where the guides grill up some kangaroo and sausages while we watch the sunset.

As night falls and the temperature drops, the desert seems to come alive. I have no idea where they were all hiding, but looking out the front of the bus, there are kangaroos constantly jumping across the road. Joey joins the guides up front as a spotter, and as we drift off for a nap, we can hear him chatting away a mile a minute, telling them all about his trip.

It’s been a long but amazing day. Sadly, we can definitely sense that our travels are almost at an end. Tomorrow we’re headed for Melbourne, the final stop on our journey. Que triste.