Hi everyone,

We left Coober Pedy early on Sunday morning and drove for most of the day to reach Uluru. We stopped at the Breakaways and got some good pictures, then caught up on sleep on the bus! We had lunch at the South Australia/Northern Territory border and changed time zones again.

We stopped at Mount Connor lookout, which is also known as Fuluru, as daft tourists can often mistake it for Uluru, although theres 200km separting the two!

We reached Yulara and jumped straight in the pool as the temperatures were soaring and it did feel like we were stood in an oven. We went up to a lookout and watched the sunset over Kata Tjuta and Uluru then spent our night on the lookout in our swags with only the odd dingo for company!

Tuesday we were awake at 4.30am to watch the sunrise over Uluru. Even though it was low season the viewing area was packed with tourists. The rock really did change colour and it was definatly worth the early wake up call. We walked round Kata Tjuta before the sun had really started to heat up the ground. We stopped for an ice cream then headed back to our campsite for lunch and an afternoon in the pool. The temperatures were over 40C so we were happy just to laze in the water all afternoon. We watched sunset over Uluru in the evening then spent our second night in swags at our exclusive lookout point.

On Wednesday we were up again at 4.30 to start the 9km walk around Uluru before the sun rose. It was good to see close up and our tour guide Mike told us lots of Aboriginal stories about the rock. After the walk we packed up camp and drove to Kings Creek Cattle Station. On the way we spotted the Groovy Grape tour bus which was doing the reverse of our trip stuck on the side of the road with no working air conditioning system in over 40C temperatures. As they had 5 days left of their trip and we only had two, we gave up our cool, comfortable and classy bus for one that was, well, bloody boiling!! Once we got the Kings Creek we jumped in the pool and had a well earnt cool down! One last night was spent under the stars and we even had a dust storm blow over us in the middle of night, theres nothing more fun than waking up to a layer of red dust all over your face at 4.30am!

Two more days of the tour left, and the temperatures are set to get hotter!

Lots of love, Hayley & Rose