We got through the airport (or lack there of!) with our luggage and boarded the shuttle bus that was to take us to our resort; Sails in the Desert. By the way, in case you might have thought otherwise, the heat was tremendous! As soon as we got off the cool plane we realised how hot it was. (But I have to say, it’s not has bad as Sydney heat, because there is no humidity in Uluru)
We started driving off down the road, surrounded on both sides by desert and the green bushes/trees that I had seen dotted on the landscape from the air. At times we could see Uluru sitting out there in the middle of the land, huge against the flat landscape. I quickly reached for my camera. Little did I know that these would be the first of around 400 photos that I was going to take while in Uluru! The bus driver, a young man, was quite funny on our way to the hotel. We pulled up to a deserted intersection (confirming the total isolation of the place) where a stop sign was posted in the ground. The bus driver stated “Here, ladies and gentlemen is the only stop sign that you will see in Uluru”! Also, when we were passing the town centre he said, “Here, ladies and gents is the town centre… (short pause), that was it! If you blinked you would have missed it!”
We got off at our resort and were pleased to find a beautiful reception with an Aboriginal gallery located in the foyer. After we checked in, we went to find our rooms, passing a very welcoming pool. We walked along what seemed like endless outdoor corridors that looked out upon more red dust until we came to rooms 328 and 329. The four of us went into our rooms and quickly got changed into our swimmers. We went downstairs and found some deckchairs on the grass. However, we all went to hop straight into the pool. It was so nice to be swimming in that pool after our reasonably long plane trip. Jack and I stayed in for hours with Mum and Jenny popping in every so often. It was so nice to be able to relax and live in holiday mode. At around 6pm, we all went back up to our rooms to have showers and get ready to go into the town centre.
We caught the shuttle bus again (the shuttle buses just do circles around the whole ayers rock resort, which is made up of different hotels) to the town centre, passing different hotels, the camping ground and you guessed it… more red desert. We got off at our stop and walked our way into the small shopping area. We had a quick look around and decided to eat in the only restaurant in the town centre (it was a difficult choice) which was called “Gecko’s Cafe”. It kind of reminded me of an RSL kind of restaurant, but was very nice with lovely food. All four of us chatted about how excited we were and how much we were looking forward to actually seeing the rock up close. Of course my favourite part was desert at the end, chocolate brownies! YUM!
We wandered our way back to the hotel instead of catching a bus, and went back to our hotel rooms. By this stage it was around 10pm and we had to get ready for our early-rise adventure in the morning… SUNRISE CAMEL TOURS! I was really excited about being on a camel in the middle of the desert, but the part where I had to wake up at 4:30am…. yeah, we’ll see how excited I am then!
