Howdy, Getting up the next morning at 5:30 was not easy, but I quickly ran into the showers to try and wake up. They were great and did the trick. By 6 we had all eaten and were ready for the journey to the rock. Once into the national park area we stopped briefly at a look out point from a different angle. There was no one but us there and you could just see the red from the sun appearing around the rock. the rest of the rock was in pure darkness. 5 minutes later and we were at the main look out point which was really crowded. The sun started to rise and I got some amazing photos of the rock, which I will bore you with at another date. We were all in good form and were messing around taking photos of a so called birds eye view of the rock (a little red stone on the floor), Alan with the cowboy hat on and James trying to jump ontop of a sign post. An hour or so after sunrise we went for a bit of a walk around the rock and had a look at some of the paintings from the aboriginals and some of the sacred sites. We got to one section which had the stone cut under the rock like a wave - a bit like wave rock in Perth, so we all ran up the side of the rock for a group photo. This looked good in the picture but standing up was difficult as you were at such an angle. Myself and Kim were falling all over the place. Shortly after this point we had to decide weather to climb the rock or continue to walk around the rock. The aboriginals would prefer if people didn't climb the rock, but there were lots of people doing it and Matt out tour guide had also done it, but he wouldn't sway us either way. In the end I thought sod it I'm going with the 8 or so others that were heading up. Climbing the rock was a lot harder than I (& I'm sure a few others in the group) anticpated, It was quite steep to begin with and when we got about half way up and thought it was the top we were really disapointed. Off we went again, but we were having a good laugh in the group all the way up and we all stuck together. Before we reached the top we first met a woman making her way down quite quickly to get help for some one that was injured above, the next thing you know there was a helicopter landing above us. We made it to the top to see her leg hanging off - only kidding she was laughing and joking and it appeared only to be a sprain or some thing. Were we glad the helicopter landed though. They gave us some bottles of badly needed water. At the top of Ayers rock you could get amazing views of the Olgas and the whole area. Of course we had to have a group photo and we had to mess around a bit more before heading down. Katrin aswell as a couple of the other girls had to bring big ruck sacks up with them, so being the perfect gentleman I offered to give her a hand and carry the ruck sack. Well in exchange for some water!!! Back down from the rock and we headed to the campsite for lunch. On our way down they closed the walk up as it was getting windy. We had a nice lunch and then went into the resort complex to shop around and relax. In the evening we went back to watch the sunset but this time we set up early, had the best spot and opened a few beers. We were all glad to get back to base for dinner as we were all knackered from the walking and early starts. It had to be opened sooner or later so after dinner I cracked open the red wine from Perth and Myself, Christina and Katrin made quick work of it, luckily I still had plenty of beer left! We didn't have a late night (11ish) as we all had to be up at 5:30 again for sunrise over the Olgas.