Adelaide to Alice Springs - Day 5

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Another early start 5am in order to see the sunrise in Uluru.

Get ready because there are 66 photos on this post!

If you compare that photo of Uluru with the one at the sunset yesterday you'll notice the big difference in colour.

After the sunrise there were several options available to us so you could choose what you would like to do. The choices were to stay in the bus, do the walk around Uluru (which is about 10 Km) or climb Uluru.

I opted for the climb together with another 2-3 people although most people prefered to do the walk around Uluru.

It was a very hot day, 35-37C so first we did a small walk (about 20 min) where Bee explained to us a little bit about the aboriginals'  rites and mythology showing us some of their places of interest around Uluru. After that for my disappointment we realised the rangers had closed the climb to Uluru, which they usually do when is a bit windy, there's been an accident, there is an aboriginal ceremony, rain, etc...
so we all went for the walk around Uluru.

It was quite early in the morning when we started so it wasn't too hot which was good although I found the walk quite dissapointing, the landscape doesn't vary much, it is completely flat, there are some places where you are not allowed to take pictures and there was no protection from the sun and by the end of the walk it was getting quite hot.

Uluru looks quite homogeneous from a distance but as you can see on the pictures above that is not the case. There are holes, black marks from waterfalls (after a rainy day) and many other features that makes it quite different from what you can appreciate from the distance.

We found a worm train on the way

And along the trail we also found like an oasis at some point with a lot of vegetation and even a little waterfall. That probably was the nicest part of this walk.

When we got to the end of the trail. I noticed the rangers had re-opened the climb so I asked Bee whether I would still have the time to do it and she said that we could if I wanted. She asked who else wanted to do it but it seems the 10 Km walk had put some people off to do the climb so we were only two, me and Marco who were interested in doing it.

The dots on the mountain are people and that's the easiest part of the climb with a chain.

The climb looked steep and you could see people struggling and going really slow on their way up. It probably was the toughest climb I've ever done, not just for the climb itself but also because of the heat, at that point it was scorching, 35-37C. It was really steep and in many places you would have to use the chain that went all along the first part of the climb in order to be able to climb, otherwise your shoes wouldn't have enough grip. It is hard to decide what was more painful, the legs or the arms. More than half of the people climbing turned around even before reaching half of the chain and as you were climbing, the whole chain path was full of people laying down or sitting down taking a break.

Half way through the chain part...looking down was really impressive...

When they told me before starting the climb that 8 people had died climbing it I thought it was a bit of an exageration or perhaps they were people with heart problems of some kind, it looked hard but from there to actually die I thought it was a streach. When I was climbing it, it didn't look that far fetch, it's easy to push yourself too far beyond your fitness level on that climb and together with the heat and dehydration I can see why some people may have died, you only had to look at all the people laying down along the climb trying to get some air back into their lungs...actually, on the way down, that was quite a funny show to watch!

Anyway, once I reached the end of the chain everything was much easier.

In fact, from there onwards it was quite an easy climb.

The summit

Coming down

Coming down on the chain part was also quite challenging, it almost looked like rappel at times and your legs were screaming in pain first from the effort to climb and then from slowing down your body in your descend. No rest for the wicked!

After Uluru we went to the camp, grab something to eat and Bee took us all to the swimming pool for an hour where we had quite a nice relaxing time.

From there we went for yet another walk (about 8-9 Km) to Kata Tjuta. For me this walk can be easily described like King Solomon's mines, it's an oasis in the middle of the desert. It reminded me when the explorers in the King Solomon's mines movie reach the valley where the mines are. Absolutely breathtaking!

And then we got to the best part

When we got back to the camp it was already night. Lee, the Scottish lad that also came with us in the excursion from Melbourne to Adelaide (The great ocean road) and had made those fantastic spaguetti bolognese  was in charge of the kitchen again (nothing like having a Cheff as part of your group) :-) and prepared a fantastic chicken with nuts sauce and a pretty good mash potatoes which I was in charge of smashing to perfection.

By the time dinner was served I was starving, the 25 Km + the hour in the swimming pool really made me hungry, I would have eaten a Kangaroo all by myself should I've seen one around. Instead I opted for two fantastic chicken portions with its corresponding nut sauce and mash potatoes, not a bad way to end such a fantastic day...then to the swag and to admire the stars until you fall asleep...

This night it was my turn to have a visitant...in my case it was some kind of insect that just crawled to my head and when it noticed I was moving, it made a run for it...never saw what it was, but it was quick! that's for sure!


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