Blogs from Uluru, Northern Territory, Australia, Oceania - page 9

What kind of nutter would book themselves on a day trip which involves travelling 1100 kms on a bus? Me for starters, and apparently a whole bunch of other people too. So at 6.00am I was waiting for the bus outside my hotel. It was freezing in Alice Springs, about 3 degrees, although the locals tell me that’s good, last week it was -2 degrees. The bus finally rolled by and I joined a coach load of other nutters heading out on quite possibly the world’s longest day trip. Our two guides, GJ and Tick, have control of us for the day and do a fine job in keeping us entertained, pointing out the sights and the animals, and educating us on the plant life, history, aboriginal folklore and geological beginnings of Uluru (formerly Ayers Rock) ... read more

It was the last day of our short but memorable trip to the red center of Australia but we had one more stop before we headed to the airport to catch our early afternoon flight back to Melbourne. We were picked up mid morning and taken to the airport, however we weren’t boarding our flight back to Melbourne, but instead were going on a 50 minute helicopter flight over the beautiful Ayers Rock and The Olgas. It was a perfectly clear and sunny day, we couldn’t have picked a better day to do a helicopter flight. After signing the paperwork we were shortly boarding the helicopter and soon enough we were in the air. We first headed towards Ayers Rock and circled around it, the view from the air was absolutely incredible. The flat red sand ... read more

On the 22nd of May I was up till the early hours of the morning deciding whether or not I should book flights and hotel to Ayers Rock for a surprise trip for Hannah’s birthday. Flights were expensive, really expensive and accommodation options very limited and equally as expensive as the flights, and for such a short amount of time was it really worth the money? Eventually I thought to hell with it, I’ll book it. I’d already secretly emailed Hannah’s manager and requested a couple of days holiday over her birthday, so she had absolutely no idea I was planning anything. In fact to stop her getting suspicious I told her I had planned dinner, technically it was true, I’d also booked us on the Sound of Silence Tour on her birthday, along with a ... read more

Day 120, 09/01/12 Up at 4:15am!! It was still dark but it was worth it as we watched the sunrise over Uluru whilst eating our breakfast. We did the Base walk which was pretty long and we did get a bit wet because of the rain but it soon cleared up and we were fine. The Base walk is basically a walk around the whole rock and is about 7km's which is strange because the whole perimiter of the rock is about 9.5kms and it is 350m high (I told you it was huge) but the walk was really nice and you really don't realise how big the rock is until you walk around it. We learnt a few more little stories and some parts of the rock you are not allowed to photograph because it ... read more

I was up early to be picked up by my tour. I met Florent and Stephanie at my hostel who were coming on the same tour and the 3 of us hit it off straight away. Florent is from France and Stephanie is from Germany. We had an interesting mix of people in group. Some older people and a few younger ones. We started heading out of Alice towards Uluru. We stopped to see "fooluru" but it was too smokey to see it. Fooluru is another big rock in the desert that looks similar to Uluru from one side and when they first opened up Uluru as a tourist thing people would get confused and think this place was Uluru and take their pictures and turn back to Alice Springs. It was so smokey because of ... read more