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After Qantas had changed our flight times, we ended up in the unfortunate situation of flying into Alice Springs, picking up a rental car and, after having picked up a car load full of snacks, driving for 5 hours to get to Kings Canyon! It turned out that with a standard rental car, we weren't allowed to drive on the unsealed roads between Alice Springs and Kings Canyon so we had to take a longer detour. In hindsight, obviously it wasn't the best plan, but I guess we can add boring outback driving to our list of life experiences... and it is a bit different to the usual road trips - 130km/h speed limits along excessively long straight roads through the dessert where they have to put a road sign in place if there is a slight bend or if you are going over a minor hill (perhaps in case you have just made sure your wheels are aligned and you just leave a brick on the accelerator and read a book or watch a movie on a portable DVD player or something)! Anyhow, we got to Kings Canyon Resort, had a fairly average dinner across the road and decided day
2 would be better.
Day 2 was definitely better. We went for the walk up Kings Canyon, which was hard work but enjoyable. Luckily being winter, we had the sun providing some warmth and a cool breeze, but I don't know how people could stand to go for a big walk in the open in the middle of summer. The red rock formations in the Northern Territory are so different from any of the other parts of the world we have been to and provide some interesting scenery.
We drove for 3 more hours and had a few minutes of excitement when we spotted some dingoes at the side of the road... they were gnawing on what looked like a baby's t-shirt -hahaha, ok I recognise that the joke was somewhat poor taste but it still made me laugh so I don't care. We arrived at the resort (the only accommodation for miles) and watched the sunset over Ayer's Rock. Everyone had told us that the rocks changed colour and glow when the sun sets or rises over them so we watched for a while and didn't notice much of a difference. However, when we later looked at
Kata Tjuta
Just after sunrise!our photographs it was a bit more obvious.
On our final day, while Caleb had a sleep in (on his birthday) I got up early and went to drive to Kata Tjuta (or the Olgas) to watch the sun rise. I realised after I had been driving for 15 minutes that I had not brought my pass to get into the national park!!! By the time I had got the pass and driven back to Kata Tjuta, the sun was pretty much up. We had some breakfast and went back to Uluru and walked around part of the bottom of the rock. There are heaps of big caves and indents around the sides of Uluru which you don't really notice in photos. Our of respect for the local indigenous beliefs, we refused to climb Uluru. (Perhaps it is more accurate to say that after our first dose of exercise since we got married (hahaha) at Kings Canyon we weren't too fussed about climbing Uluru anyway.)
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