Uluru

We began our day in the park with a side-trip to see Kata Tjuta (the Olgas).  While not quite as famous as Uluru itself, these rock formations were pretty impressive as well.

We took the 2km round trip hike to the first lookout at the Olgas.  After Kings Canyon I made a rule to rest every kilometer… so here's me half way.

 

The path continued on into the distance, but this hike was even longer than Kings Canyon.

There were still a lot of clouds in the sky so we had to wait for the right moment to snap photos with some blue in them. 

 

We watched the direction the blue bits of sky were drifting, and decided to see if we could catch Uluru in some good light.  We drove over to the more popular part of the park and grabbed some lunch at the Uluru cultural center.  That's where we learned that the Rock was a very sacred site to the aboriginals and that climbing it is an insult to them and their culture. Also learned some other tidbits, but I don't remember very much of it. There's also a museum of sorts there and a gift shop.  The perfect place to start souvenir shopping.  Ming was thinking about getting a round Tuit, but didn't quite get around to it.

 

 

If you catch Uluru in the rain like we did, you're not as unlucky as you might first believe.  Although hard to capture in pictures, streams of rain come down over the rock in rivulets which reflect in any sunlight that happens to peek through.

 Finally we did manage to catch a little sun on our way out of the park, so we pulled over.

 If you stare at it long enough...

It starts to look like a car commercial. 

 

With a flight leaving at 3:30, we had to leave Uluru and return our rental car to prepare for our trip to Cairns.

 

Goodbye outback!