August 11, 2012
August 11, 2012
Aimee is sick. Her sore throat is worse and now she has a slight fever. She is bummed and it is not good timing. We are on the move again to the airport for the next leg of our trip. We are headed for the opposite of Cairns, the desert center of Australia. Cairns is on a narrow strip of green lining the coast. As we fly inward, we pass another thin strip of farmland and then nothing, just arid brown rolling hills. No rivers either, only dry washes. I do see an occasional road but they are all dirt. No paved ones and certainly no towns. As we fly on the only thing that changes is the color. The ground goes from brown to gray to red.
After three hours we land in the “Red Centre” at Ayers Rock airport. We secure another rental car and drive the five miles to the resort complex. We have a reservation for a cabin in the campground. We normally wouldn’t have stayed here but the alternatives are budget busters. Besides we are familiar with campgrounds and have often talked about staying in the cabins we’ve seen in the US.
After checking in, we head to Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. Uluru is the Aborigine name for Ayers Rock, as Denali is to Mt. McKinley. We pay a stiff entrance fee and drive up to the red monolith. It is one giant piece of rock jutting straight out of an otherwise very flat landscape. It is too late for the base walk so I decide to climb to the top. Aimee waits for me at the bottom. In addition to being sick, she is afraid of heights and wouldn’t have come along anyway. The hike up is not long but is atop very steep slickrock. An iron chain follows the ridgeline so people can pull themselves up the incline. I am huffing and puffing by the time I reach the top. The path up is pretty cool but the uninteresting top is anticlimactic. The peak is so big and flat the views are not 360. Not to mention there is virtually nothing in the surrounding terrain to see anyway.
Ayers Rock is another result of Australia wandering the tectonic globe alone. Since it hasn't bumped into another continent in a hundred million years, no new mountains were formed. The old ones had plenty of time to erode away making Australia the flattest continent. Uluru is a very hard mountain core that resisted millions of years of erosion. The return hike down the steep incline is treacherous. If you are not careful, I could see easily tumbling all the way to the bottom. No wonder a bunch of people have died on this trail.
After the climb, we went to the Cultural Center to learn about the Aborigine owners of the park. It was a big disappointment. They are nowhere to be seen. We saw a few in Cairns but have had little conversation with them. The Australian Aborigine experience parallels our own Indian history, just more recent. Aborigines are a very old people having crossed the sea from Asia to Australia some 50,000 years ago.
Since it is getting late, we went to the sunset parking lot to watch Uluru change colors as the sun drops closer and closer to the horizon. This is the same thing we do at home with our mountain view. Afterwards we went to the market to buy groceries for a very late dinner.
Aimee is sick. Her sore throat is worse and now she has a slight fever. She is bummed and it is not good timing. We are on the move again to the airport for the next leg of our trip. We are headed for the opposite of Cairns, the desert center of Australia. Cairns is on a narrow strip of green lining the coast. As we fly inward, we pass another thin strip of farmland and then nothing, just arid brown rolling hills. No rivers either, only dry washes. I do see an occasional road but they are all dirt. No paved ones and certainly no towns. As we fly on the only thing that changes is the color. The ground goes from brown to gray to red.
After three hours we land in the “Red Centre” at Ayers Rock airport. We secure another rental car and drive the five miles to the resort complex. We have a reservation for a cabin in the campground. We normally wouldn’t have stayed here but the alternatives are budget busters. Besides we are familiar with campgrounds and have often talked about staying in the cabins we’ve seen in the US.
Ayers Rock is another result of Australia wandering the tectonic globe alone. Since it hasn't bumped into another continent in a hundred million years, no new mountains were formed. The old ones had plenty of time to erode away making Australia the flattest continent. Uluru is a very hard mountain core that resisted millions of years of erosion. The return hike down the steep incline is treacherous. If you are not careful, I could see easily tumbling all the way to the bottom. No wonder a bunch of people have died on this trail.
Since it is getting late, we went to the sunset parking lot to watch Uluru change colors as the sun drops closer and closer to the horizon. This is the same thing we do at home with our mountain view. Afterwards we went to the market to buy groceries for a very late dinner.
posted by Mike and Aimee at 8:54 AM
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