Tick tock, five days left...

My last trip in Australia is coming to an end. Having visited both Kakadu and Litchfield national parks, been on a final killer busride, this time it was 26 hours although we had a couple of hour long breaks for swimming, etc, and seen the one and only Uluru, this adventure is all too quickly about to say its final goodbye.

Speaking of Uluru, this has been an interesting journey to say the least. I'm doing this tour which is technically three tours, Uluru being the last part of it. The company is messy to say the least, and I'm not too fond of how they have organized things. Starting out with only booking us into one night in a hostel in Darwin, things only only went on and on after that. I find out that I've been upgraded, thanks to another woman on the tour - to this day I still haven't gotten any info on it. They gave three different groups three different pick up times, although we were all going on the same one and so on. I finally got to the Uluru-Kata Tjuta NP and once again it was raining. At first, this was pretty exciting, as there is a very limited group that gets the chance to see this big rock in the rain. Sadly, we realized pretty quickly that rain has its disadvantages. We got to Kata Tjuta, another big rock formation in the same park, and... We couldn't see it. At least not in all it's glory, because it was really foggy and cloudy. We still went on the walk around certain rocks, and the scenery we did see was amazing with tiny waterfalls running off the rocks, but it doesn't really feel like I've seen it.

After the walk we hop on the bus and head over to the sunset viewing area to get some pictures of Uluru. Or at least we thought so, but as it turned out, it was too cloudy for an actual sunset. We got some snacks and champagne though, which made things a little better. The next morning we were up at 5.10 to be able to make it to the sunrise, but it was the same story again. When we left the rock it wasn't even visible which was a shame. We went to the cultural centre instead of doing a base walk in the rain, and then it cleared up and we went on a walk with an aboriginal guide. They are very fascinating people, and afterwards our normal guide told us some examples of why it has been such a clash between the aboriginal community and the white.

Things got better and the weather improved a lot. The next day we hiked Kings canyon, which was absolutely beautiful, and for once, the weather was great too. Due to the bad weather earlier we had to drive the long way back, which took about five hours but it doesn't bother me anymore. Anything under 20 is easy! The things you learn in Australia. Overall it was a great time and even though the weather wasn't what we had expected, things turned out to be really good. I'll just have to come back to Oz for the mandatory "sunset at Uluru with me in front of it"-picture. What a shame!

Xxx
Kajsa