It's Raining on the Rock
Aug. 26th, 2010 04:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
memelainaFlying in over Ayer's Rock I expected the desert to be dry and red, but found it, while not lush, to be greener and more full of trees than the American southwest. Apparently it had been raining lightly but steadily for the past two days - and that rain didn't stop until late in the afternoon of our last day in Yulara. It rains, so they told us in the visitor's center, only a dozen days a year at the Red Center, and we were "lucky" enough to be there during one of those times.
Now surely you have all seen photos of Uluru, rising bright red from the flat desert. The rock that we saw did indeed rise steeply over the plain, but the desert itself was blooming with new green grass, flowering bushes, and more trees than I've ever seen in an American desert landscape. Above it all Uluru (Ayers Rock) rose grey and slick, it's sides steep and almost bluegreen in the mist with tiny waterfalls shining their way down the sides.
At the tiny Yulara airport (a single runway in the desert) our Virgin Blue plane rolled up to the terminal and they rolled a flight of stairs up to the plane for us to disembark on the tarmac. Our luggage made it through with us, and we handed it over to be stored in the bowels of the huge bus that takes people from the airport to the resort "town" of Yulara. Yulara is made up of four hotels, a set of rental apartments, and a campground. There's the "town center" which is a small plaza between three of the hotels with a restautant, a deli, a tourist booking center, and four or five shops including a small supermarket. That's all that tourists see, but somewhere folded into the desert there is a primary school and a library. I know this because of signs in the postoffice advertising various local activities at these locations. But the hotels are all owned by the same company and are all on a loop serviced by our airport shuttle, and by smaller shuttle buses throughout the day.
We stayed at the Lost Camel Hotel, a mid-level establishment not as rustic as the Pioneer Hotel or as elegant as the Sails in the Desert. Our room was quite comfortable but very odd. The bed was in the very middle of the room with a walkway around it at front and sides, and the built up headboard acted as a room divider to separate the room from the sink along the back wall. behind the sink, and entered through a glass door on either side of it, are a separate 5' x 5' tiled shower room and toilet room - both with big picture windows! There were heavy grey shower curtains to pull over the windows when you wanted to hide from view, but by doing so you block all natural light into the room.
Now I had thought that I might spend part of our two days at Yulara sitting in a lounge at the pool soaking up sun and admiring the view, but, first, the rain made sitting poolside a poor idea, and second, there isn't any view. The pool at the Lost Camel was at the center of the hotel complex with buildings on all sides, but even had it not been, you can't see Uluru from the resort area at all. The resort is built low into a fold in the desert that hides it from the Rock, and hides the Rock from the resort. The one exception to this is a "dune" viewing area at the center of the hotel loop where you can climb up about fifteen feet or so and get a nice view of Uluru to one side and Kata Tjota (the Olgas) to the other.
I had been telling Kent for months that I would not go on a bus trip into the Outback. Every time we travel, Kent wants to take bus tours, and I end up agreeing against my better judgement and then spending the day being sick. This time I stuck to my guns and refused both the Sunset Tour, the Sunrise Tour, and the all day tour. Instead we rented a Hertz car at the airport the next morning, picked up some sodas at the supermarket and some sandwiches at the deli, and headed out to make a day of it on our own..
It's pretty much impossible to get lost between Yulara and Uluru. There's only one road, and it goes where you want to go. We stopped at the entrance to the National Park to pay our $25 apiece for three-day entrance tickets, and then drove on towards the Sunset Viewing Area with Uluru rising higher and greyer in front of us by the moment. Now it seemed to me that "sunset viewing" would involve seeing the sun set over the Rock. Not so! The Sunset Viewing Area is to the west of the Rock and you watch the last rays of the sun roll across the desert and light it up into flaming red. Well, so they say. During the time we were there, the Rock was grey, just grey, and all of the sunrise and sunset viewing tours were cancelled because of overhanging clouds and rain.
On our first stop at the Sunset Viewing Area we met a young couple who asked us to take their photo for an entry application to The Amazing Race. They in turn took ours, and that's the nice postcard of "Mem and Kent at Uluru" that you've all seen on Facebook.
We drove all around the Rock and stopped to take photos at various areas. The smooth sides are clearly worked by water, as are the caves that pock the surface on all sides. I suppose that knowing that the buttes in our own Colorodo desert were once islands in a great inland sea made it easier to accept that all of central Australia was once also an inland sea, and the Rock was a giant formation of folded sandstone, molded by water and then left high and dry when the sea swept away.
After Uluru we drove the 40 klicks over to Kata Tjuta (also known as The Olgas) which is a similar extrusion of rock rising up into the desert, but this one is normally greyish (and was even greyer in the rain) and is made of a denser rock rising up in bulbs and knobs with gorges and canyons in between. I don't think we would have tried the walk down the gorge, despite our walking sticks, but it was closed because of the slick conditions so we didn't have to make a choice.
Meals at Yulara are extravagantly expensive. All the food has to be brought in on road trains of trucks, not to mention the fact that it's a total monopoly. There's no where else to go to eat, and they can charge what the like. We mostly ate at The Gecko Restaurant in the town center. It was, apparently, less expensive than the other hotel based restaurants, but we ended up paying at least $60 an evening for pasta, bread, and drinks for two. Kickunu, the restaurant in the up-scale Sails in the Desert next door, charges $60 per head for their dinner buffet.
Tour prices are equally high - the lowest one being $125 per person and that does not include the $25 National Park Pass that each person must purchase. So while we missed having a guide to tell us what we were seeing, our rental car at just over $100 for 24 hours (including gas and kilmetrage) was a better deal. Not to mention that Mem did not have to ride on a bus.
Late Wednesday it began to clear up, and we were able to walk outside for the first time without being rained on. We walked up to the viewing dune, through the blooming desert, and took another look at Uluru in the distance, still grey and glowering, but beginning to have hits of red among the grey. As we saw the Rock in the distance while heading out to the airport the following morning (under a clear blue sky and with a strong smell of eucalyptus and flowering plants in the air) the red had nearly overcome the grey.
Now surely you have all seen photos of Uluru, rising bright red from the flat desert. The rock that we saw did indeed rise steeply over the plain, but the desert itself was blooming with new green grass, flowering bushes, and more trees than I've ever seen in an American desert landscape. Above it all Uluru (Ayers Rock) rose grey and slick, it's sides steep and almost bluegreen in the mist with tiny waterfalls shining their way down the sides.
At the tiny Yulara airport (a single runway in the desert) our Virgin Blue plane rolled up to the terminal and they rolled a flight of stairs up to the plane for us to disembark on the tarmac. Our luggage made it through with us, and we handed it over to be stored in the bowels of the huge bus that takes people from the airport to the resort "town" of Yulara. Yulara is made up of four hotels, a set of rental apartments, and a campground. There's the "town center" which is a small plaza between three of the hotels with a restautant, a deli, a tourist booking center, and four or five shops including a small supermarket. That's all that tourists see, but somewhere folded into the desert there is a primary school and a library. I know this because of signs in the postoffice advertising various local activities at these locations. But the hotels are all owned by the same company and are all on a loop serviced by our airport shuttle, and by smaller shuttle buses throughout the day.
We stayed at the Lost Camel Hotel, a mid-level establishment not as rustic as the Pioneer Hotel or as elegant as the Sails in the Desert. Our room was quite comfortable but very odd. The bed was in the very middle of the room with a walkway around it at front and sides, and the built up headboard acted as a room divider to separate the room from the sink along the back wall. behind the sink, and entered through a glass door on either side of it, are a separate 5' x 5' tiled shower room and toilet room - both with big picture windows! There were heavy grey shower curtains to pull over the windows when you wanted to hide from view, but by doing so you block all natural light into the room.
Now I had thought that I might spend part of our two days at Yulara sitting in a lounge at the pool soaking up sun and admiring the view, but, first, the rain made sitting poolside a poor idea, and second, there isn't any view. The pool at the Lost Camel was at the center of the hotel complex with buildings on all sides, but even had it not been, you can't see Uluru from the resort area at all. The resort is built low into a fold in the desert that hides it from the Rock, and hides the Rock from the resort. The one exception to this is a "dune" viewing area at the center of the hotel loop where you can climb up about fifteen feet or so and get a nice view of Uluru to one side and Kata Tjota (the Olgas) to the other.
I had been telling Kent for months that I would not go on a bus trip into the Outback. Every time we travel, Kent wants to take bus tours, and I end up agreeing against my better judgement and then spending the day being sick. This time I stuck to my guns and refused both the Sunset Tour, the Sunrise Tour, and the all day tour. Instead we rented a Hertz car at the airport the next morning, picked up some sodas at the supermarket and some sandwiches at the deli, and headed out to make a day of it on our own..
It's pretty much impossible to get lost between Yulara and Uluru. There's only one road, and it goes where you want to go. We stopped at the entrance to the National Park to pay our $25 apiece for three-day entrance tickets, and then drove on towards the Sunset Viewing Area with Uluru rising higher and greyer in front of us by the moment. Now it seemed to me that "sunset viewing" would involve seeing the sun set over the Rock. Not so! The Sunset Viewing Area is to the west of the Rock and you watch the last rays of the sun roll across the desert and light it up into flaming red. Well, so they say. During the time we were there, the Rock was grey, just grey, and all of the sunrise and sunset viewing tours were cancelled because of overhanging clouds and rain.
On our first stop at the Sunset Viewing Area we met a young couple who asked us to take their photo for an entry application to The Amazing Race. They in turn took ours, and that's the nice postcard of "Mem and Kent at Uluru" that you've all seen on Facebook.
We drove all around the Rock and stopped to take photos at various areas. The smooth sides are clearly worked by water, as are the caves that pock the surface on all sides. I suppose that knowing that the buttes in our own Colorodo desert were once islands in a great inland sea made it easier to accept that all of central Australia was once also an inland sea, and the Rock was a giant formation of folded sandstone, molded by water and then left high and dry when the sea swept away.
After Uluru we drove the 40 klicks over to Kata Tjuta (also known as The Olgas) which is a similar extrusion of rock rising up into the desert, but this one is normally greyish (and was even greyer in the rain) and is made of a denser rock rising up in bulbs and knobs with gorges and canyons in between. I don't think we would have tried the walk down the gorge, despite our walking sticks, but it was closed because of the slick conditions so we didn't have to make a choice.
Meals at Yulara are extravagantly expensive. All the food has to be brought in on road trains of trucks, not to mention the fact that it's a total monopoly. There's no where else to go to eat, and they can charge what the like. We mostly ate at The Gecko Restaurant in the town center. It was, apparently, less expensive than the other hotel based restaurants, but we ended up paying at least $60 an evening for pasta, bread, and drinks for two. Kickunu, the restaurant in the up-scale Sails in the Desert next door, charges $60 per head for their dinner buffet.
Tour prices are equally high - the lowest one being $125 per person and that does not include the $25 National Park Pass that each person must purchase. So while we missed having a guide to tell us what we were seeing, our rental car at just over $100 for 24 hours (including gas and kilmetrage) was a better deal. Not to mention that Mem did not have to ride on a bus.
Late Wednesday it began to clear up, and we were able to walk outside for the first time without being rained on. We walked up to the viewing dune, through the blooming desert, and took another look at Uluru in the distance, still grey and glowering, but beginning to have hits of red among the grey. As we saw the Rock in the distance while heading out to the airport the following morning (under a clear blue sky and with a strong smell of eucalyptus and flowering plants in the air) the red had nearly overcome the grey.
