How does that scuba thing work again?

Now that it was daylight again, we could really appreciate our accommodations in Cairns. We decided to rent a room in a B&B-type of place. The owners, Terry and Robyn, were extremely nice folks. They manage their own commercial construction company, so obviously their own home was quite comfortable as well.

 

One aspect we particularly enjoyed after our tramps in Uluru and the communal showers:  huge private whirlpool tub!

Ian also loved the fact that they were right in the jungle. We saw a large variety of wildlife just sitting around the house. Here's our outdoor breakfast area (so cute!)

And some of the visitors that would wander nearby as we ate…not naming this first one, but trust me that it was actually more cool than scary/eww-y.

Turkeys in Australia are much cooler than those in the US.

Enough about all the wildlife though. The only item on the agenda today was a scuba refresher course.  Our liveaboard company, the Cairns Dive Center, offered a free refresher the day before the trip -- I needed it. I'd only done that one Majorca/Barcelona trip after getting certified so this was my first big dive trip. Ian, with that week in the Florida Keys under his belt, probably needed it less.  It's not that I actually forgot my skills, but being able to try everything out in the pool just put me so much more at ease.  And it turns out that we'd arrived at a good time -- there are a few divemasters-in-training (Liz, Micha, and Andreas) at the Cairns Dive Center trying to get certified as guides, so we got a TON of personal attention.  All three of them were going to be on our liveaboard trip too; they informed us that they'd be offering their services as guides free-of-charge so that they could get more experience.  So we'll be seeing a lot more of them in the next couple days.

After the refresher, I somehow managed to convince Ian to ride bikes down to Cairns city.  Robyn had her son put together these brand new push-bikes (that's what they call them here, I suppose that makes sense, comparing them to motor-bikes) and opened up some brand new helmets as well. It was a GREAT ride down to the city. Nice breeze, mostly down-hill, good scenery around the Esplanade. We polished it off with a great dinner at the Raw Prawn -- figured out what crocodile was actually supposed to taste like and had some amazing kangaroo too.  The Esplanade also had some cute novelty stores.

As the sun set though, we realized to our dismay that our bikes did not have any lights...and that a lot of those cute bike paths that we'd ridden on did not have lights either. Hmmm...there might be more "pushing" than "biking."  We got home pretty exhausted.  Quick to bed...5:45AM pick-up tomorrow morning!

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! 

Kings Canyon Rim Walk & Uluru Sunset

You might wonder why we bothered to drive all day yesterday to King's Canyon when we only have a couple days in the red centre in total. It's a valid question -- we could easily have flown to Uluru directly and then spent 2-3 days there before flying off to Cairns. But I'd heard so much about the King's Canyon Rim Walk that we had to fit that in somehow. So, the plan today was to wake up as early as possible to tackle the hike before it got too hot. The forecast for the day called for highs of 31-32 degrees celsius -- doing the 8 kilometer walk with very little tree cover in that heat would NOT be pleasant. So we were out of the lodge by 8 and parked in the King's Canyon car park by 8:30. We armed ourselves with hats, sunblock, water, and cameras -- and we were off!

 

 

That hill behind me is called "heart attack hill" -- it's pretty much a non-stop climb for about 100 meters. It reminded us a bit of that climb up Machu Picchu -- at least this time we knew what we were getting ourselves into. At the top, there was a sign reminding visitors to stop and have a drink of water before continuing. They also put up some informational plaques -- basically an excuse for those too proud to admit that they NEED to rest -- "oh, I'm totally fine, but hey - what's this? Hmmm, so interesting!"

 

Soon though, the scenery itself was enough of an excuse to stop.
 

I'm sure there's a great scientific explanation for how King's Canyon came to be -- full of glaciers and land masses moving and sedimentary rock and what not…if you're really interested, I'm sure wikipedia could help you out. :) For now, you just get the pretty pictures.

 

 

We were actually surprised by how close you got to walk to the edges.

 

 

 

They had these "beware of the cliffs -- you may fall to your death" signs all over the place. Very comforting.

 

 

Turns out our fear of the sun was unwarranted.  The strong winds meant that it actually got to be quite comfortable up high with the breezes.  We both removed our somewhat-ridiculous -- I mean -- extremely fashionable -- hats before too long.

 

The hike wasn't so bad once you made it past the first section, but navigation was sometimes tricky. There weren't a ton of other people around, so you really had to hunt for those blue placards to find the right path.  Following the wrong color could be very dangerous -- who knows where you might be side-tracking to!

Travel tip for those who might one day travel to King's Canyon. Do the lookouts.  They're actually posted as short side-trips off of the main hike. You think it's not going to be much, but after you climb through a bit, you get some gorgeous views of the canyon walls.  For example, this shot -- what I consider our best shot of the canyon -- would have been missed entirely if I hadn't decided to investigate one of the side lookouts.

 

Just be careful not to fall into any of the cracks!

 

The hike was supposed to take us 3-3.5 hours, but we somehow managed to whip it out in 2 and a half. The cool breeze really helped -- it definitely did not feel like 31 degrees.  We wanted to stick around longer, but we ran into some folks from Queensland while walking who informed us that fires were a worry again with some lightning storms coming up. Definitely don't want to get stuck on the wrong side of the road closures if it comes to that, so it's back to the road for us.  It was about a 3 hour drive to Uluru -- with a stop along the way for some very late lunch. They had a resident emu -- I'm pretty sure this was the first time I've seen an emu in person.

 

 Crazy eyes! Definitely don't want to annoy this bird…

By mid-afternoon, we'd checked into our room.  It was a bit of a throwback to our first big trip together -- that southeast asia backpacking trip after college. Why? Our accommodations for the night was a shared hostel room. With bunk beds and communal bathrooms and showers! Don't shortchange the room though -- it actually cost more than almost all of our previous accommodations. Alas, this is what happens when there is no competition!  Ayers Rock only has a single resort complex, so they pretty much charge whatever they feel like. I didn't quite feel like shelling out $500 for a private hotel room, so hostels it was.  Luckily, no one showed up to occupy the other beds in the room, so we had a private room after all.



We weren't planning on spending a ton of time in the rooms anyhow. After checking in, we headed on out to the Ayers Rock Sunset viewing lot -- this was, after all, the main attraction at the Rock -- the beautiful colors that appear on the sandstone as a result of the setting sun. Unfortunately, it was pretty cloudy…so cloudy that there wasn't much to see besides a dull grayish-red.

 

We still took a good dozen pictures though -- this WAS the Rock after all! We were determined to enjoy our sunset.  Ian reminds me that my use of both Ayers Rock and Uluru may be confusing to readers. So brief detour here -- the rock had been known by all visitors as "Ayers Rock" until the 1990s, when the site was officially handed back to the Aboriginal people, who know it as "Uluru."  Nowadays, it's officially a dual-named location. And now you know...We'll probably be learning a bit more about the Rock tomorrow when we go on the camel tour, but for now, we'll just enjoy our sunset.

 

 

We even brought along some wine, strawberries, chocolate, and cheese. Alcohol is banned on all of the Uluru areas -- EXCEPT for the sunset viewing spots. Oh the power of tourism? We weren't complaining though.

 

After the sun "set," we still had a good 2/3 bottle of wine left to polish off, so off we went to the Pioneer BBQ. You get to buy whatever meat you want (they specialize in Australian game produce) and then you grill it yourself.  Ian thinks that it's a gimmick so that they can avoid the cost of hiring a cook -- but I thought it was kind of fun.  Now if we get stuck in the outback and are forced to live off of the land, we'll know how many minutes we should grill our game. 

 

We grilled up up some crocodile (we overcooked it), kangaroo (surprisingly tasty!), emu (not our cup of tea), and some steak (as a safety).  Now fully sated with food and drink, we headed to bed. Another early morning tomorrow -- sunrise camel ride scheduled!

The long road to Kings Canyon

After a short hop from Adelaide to Alice Springs, we were on the road again. This time the road was over 450 kilometers long and pretty much dead straight.  Ming made a rule early on.  No puns.




It could easily be over 100 miles between gas stations, so without some careful planning you could be stranded like this guy:




When there is a gas station it might be filled with creepy animal sculptures 1000x real size.




The scenery for most of the ride is monotonous shrubbery. As we started nearing Kings canyon, however, things got interesting.




It began to get hazy outside and pretty soon we were smelling smoke. Turns out that just a few days earlier this entire road was closed due to fires.





This shot makes you wonder how something as seemingly innocuous as a road affects the normal life-cycle of the native vegetation.




The road also provides a home to one of Australia's weeds, the softball sized Paddy Melon.




In case you forgot sometime in the last 400 kilometers:




Made it to Kings Canyon in time to see the sunset.




There was a nice boardwalk not far from the restaurant.




Ming discovered the sunset mode on her camera.




We went to bed early to rest up for our long walk around the canyon rim tomorrow morning.

Location:Kings Canyon, Australia

Back to Adelaide

Today was largely a travel day. We were sad to see Kangaroo Island go, but there was still a lot of Australia to see. We woke up to catch the morning ferry back to the mainland.



There were parking attendants to help us wedge our cars into their spots. Took me a few tries largely because the Aussies have different parking lingo. For example, "keep that lock" apparently means keep the steering wheel exactly where it is. At least I didn't have to get out of the car and let them do it like some people did.



On the way back to Adelaide we stopped at a winery to grab lunch. Had a great steak and washed it down with the local Cab.



They even had caramelized strawberries for a complimentary dessert.



To top it all off we watched a fly give birth to around 20 larvae on the window sill next to our table. I can see how some might view this as a negative, so I've declined to mention the restaurant's name. I thought it was kinda interesting.



When we got to our Adelaide accommodations it turned out that they somehow lost our booking. Ming showed them the email confirmation so they pretty much had to figure out a way to honor it. They did so by sticking us in one of their apartment-like suites on the 13th floor, complete with a balcony, city-view and, importantly for us, a washer and dryer.



After watching the sun set and doing a little laundry and, we headed out on the town for some food. It turns out Adelaide has quite the sizable Chinatown.




We got some takeout and went back to our "apartment" to watch the wet moon hanging lazily in the sky. It occurs to me I should have gotten some of the horizon in this shot to prove I didn't turn the camera sideways.

Location:Adelaide, Australia