That evening, after an orientation from our tour director, Matt, we ate dinner at the Ilkari Restaurant in the Sails in the Desert hotel. We all agreed that this was a superb meal. The highlight was the lamb chops (‘lollipop’ style), but everything else was great, too. Our bus driver has told us that this restaurant’s chef is among the best in Australia, and we had no arguments on that count!
Breakfast had to be early the following morning (6:30am), because we set out early at 7:20am to go on our two walks, to beat the heat. We are having an unusually hot spell at Uluru, a high of around 104F, so we don’t want to do anything except stay in the air conditioning at that heat. So we set out when the temperature was around 77F. It was much appreciated! Once you get closer to Uluru, and learn about the geological and aboriginal history, it becomes more interesting. Cave with aboriginal paintings Finally, we returned to the hotel, where we once again welcomed the cool!
We arose very early (on the bus at 5:45am!) to see sunrise at Uluru. The bus took us to a specific viewing area, where there were lots of other buses, and then followed a trail to a set of viewing areas, with throngs of other people. The sun was starting to rise, and as it did we saw changes in the illumination on Uluru. Uluru, with Kata Tjuta in the distance Admittedly, it wasn’t as striking as I had thought it might be, but it was interesting. Perhaps the sunrise wasn’t as good as it could have been. Perhaps there were clouds? Anyway, we left to return to the hotel, and a most welcome breakfast.
We checked out from our hotel, and the bus took us to Kata Tjuta. Uluru is the largest sandstone monolith in the world. But it has a much lesser known little sister, Kata Tjuta. Perhaps little sister is a misnomer. Uluru is 1,140 feet high, and about 6 miles in circumference. Kata Tjuta is a spectacular collection of 36 enormous domes, which, at its highest peak, is 650 feet higher than Uluru. Kata Tjuta is bigger, wider and taller than Uluru, but, somehow, Kata Tjuta is the neglected sister of Uluru. It is not well known, even to many Australians. So, we were fortunate that our tour takes in this impressive twin. By the way, Uluru is pronounced with the emphasis on the first and last syllables, like ‘kangaroo’. Kata Tjuta is about 45 minutes drive from Uluru, so the bus took us there, and we stopped for a short walk along a trail. The flies in this area are pretty bad, so we had to resort to head-nets. Aren’t they stylish? The trail takes you between two large domes, but unfortunately, unlike the trails at Uluru, it becomes rather rocky, and eventually you are walking on the actual rock of Kata Tjuta. While Uluru is made from a sedimentary rock called arkose sandstone, Kata Tjuta is made from a conglomerate — a mix of gravel, pebbles, and boulders, cemented together by sand and mud. This is the reason why Kata Tjuta has eroded away more quickly that Uluru. Sadly, this makes the trail more treacherous. While some people forged on to brave the rock, I decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and I returned to the bus. Some of our party were brave, others more sensible. The bus then returned us to the town square of Yulara (the location of the Sails in the Desert hotel), where we could pick our own lunch if we wished. But the temperature by then was starting to climb, so many did not bother to eat lunch there, including me. From there, the bus took us to the Uluru airport where we found quite a crush of people. There were only two check-in counters for Qantas, and only one was manned. After waiting in a long line, we eventually got our boarding passes, passed through security into the waiting area. It contained only a single gate, and probably for that reason there was no board telling us what flights were leaving, and from what gate. Even the gate did not announce what flight was boarding. It turned out that a lot of people were taking a flight to Sydney. Once they left, things got quite a bit less crowded, and soon we were winging our way to Cairns, a city in the north-east of Australia, known as the ‘gateway to the Great Barrier Reef’.
The flight from Uluru to Cairns takes only about 2 hours and 30 minutes or so. Qantas, probably the best airline I’ve ever flown, served us a small lunch, in my case a beef sandwich. When we arrived in Cairns, it was like going from one extreme to the other. Uluru was 104F, and very dry. In Cairns, it was 92F “but feels like 98F”, and there were heavy clouds strongly suggesting that rain was imminent. This was the tropics, and the rainy season at that. Our first sight of Cairns was nothing like the above photo, but we were still to experience some nice sunny spells, interspersed with spells of significant rain. We took a bus directly to the hotel.