Ayers Rock 2: The breakfast buffet is $27

The plan for the next morning was to wake up bright and early for the 6:30 AM sunrise over Ayers Rock.

Thanks to the generous food and wine portions offered by the Sounds of Silence dinner, this didn’t exactly happen.

But I did roll out of bed not TOO far past sunrise, and stumbled to the top of the campground lookout to see Ayers Rock in the morning light.

Okay, finally, a word about Ayers Rock. It’s not as red as you’ve seen in pictures. Any dramatic cherry-red poster you’ve seen has had some Photoshop work done on it. I wasn’t blown away by the sight, and I’m not sure the relative distance had anything to do with it.

I took advantage of the campground’s Internet kiosk ($25 for four hours’ usage! A steal!) while MB did her last couple hours of sleep. Then we made use of the local breakfast buffet ($54 for two people! A steal!) before heading into Uluru/Kata Tjuta National Park.

Alright, so like I said earlier, it’s hard to get any scale on Ayers Rock or the Olgas, which sit 50 km apart in the wide, wide open desert. You drive into the national park and Ayers Rock seems to fill the horizon, then you pass a sign and realize it’s still 10 km away. The road also curves around the rock as it gets closer, and Ayers Rock changes appearance from various angles. It’s much more mottled than you’d thought, and much more irregular in shape.

The weather was frickin perfect. We parked at several designated lots and walked several different trails up to and along the rock itself.

It goes against all logical sense in the world that this rock formed on the earth through any natural process whatsoever. It’s like a meteorite without a crater. Mary Beth and I both agreed that whatever cock-eyed explanation the geologists had for this thing, the aboriginal story of the spirit-gods making it for the Great Wallaby or whatever is far, far more plausible.

From every angle the thing produced new shapes and crevices. It had shallow little caves made by water or what have you. Various places were marked clearly: “SACRED SITE - DO NOT ENTER OR PHOTOGRAPH.” I’d bet a coin that the aborigines would just as soon not have the rock itself photographed, but, are picking their battles.

We weren’t cut out for the entire walk around the thing, since the day did EVENTUALLY get hot. But we drove around the opposite side to grab a picture or two, then headed back to the resort for another overpriced meal with below-average service. (Not having to tip is nice, until you realize the waiter has no incentive to actually provide decent service.)

After a lazy siesta period, it was back into the park for our trip to the Olgas, 50 km distant. Now, the Olgas are something different. Ayers Rock is known for being a singular monolith, all by its lonesome in the vastness of the continent. The Olgas, meanwhile, are a cluster of enormous round rocks, of a different shape than Ayers Rock (Kata Tjuta means “many heads”). It’s a different kind of impressive, but it’s impressive just the same. And, just like Ayers Rock, they get massiver and massiver as they approach across the empty flat desert.

Finally we were there. I promise ya, they’re just as impressive as Ayers Rock itself. I managed to con MB into taking one of the walking tracks into the maze of rocks, so we got a close-up look at the things, then headed back for the sunset view.

Again, even though everyone makes such a hubbub over sunrise and sunset, the fading sun shining off the rocks wasn’t half as stunning as the rocks themselves. No supernatural red hue appeared. As soon as they were gone to grey, we got a jump on the crowds and drove the 50 km back to camp.

And that concluded our brief foray to far as we could possibly get from proper civilization (without involving parka jackets and penguins, that is). We skipped the 5:30 sunrise wakeup call the following morning too, and in fact slept in close to 9:00 before we headed out for our 10:05 flight outta there.

Then it was a brief stopover at Alice Springs, an airport that only looks impressive when you’ve flown there from Ayers Rock, and the plane turned south toward cooler weather and the pretty city of Adelaide.

But I’ll keep up my pattern and write about Adelaide as soon as we leave, for Kangaroo Island in this case, tomorrow morning. And that’s a 6:20 pickup. So I’ll hit the hay.

Ayers Rock pics coming soon, check back…

-K & MB