18th January 2009

Had to get up at Sparrow's first cough today as the bus was picking me up at 5:45am!! Eeeeeeeeeeggg! The cute tour guide and driver that picked me up was definitely a bonus though :D

Picked up a few more passengers on the way to Uluru so shame I didn't have him all to myself ;D hee hee hee!

Several hours driving later, we arrived at a camel farm, where I rode a camel for a few minutes, which is certainly an experience!! I felt so tall riding one!! :D

Camels aren't native to Australia, they were brought over in the late 1800s for transport and to be able to lug materials around. They were set free sometime in the 1920s I think, and now apparently roam free around lots of Australia. I think our guide said there were several million camels roaming around Oz!! They have quite cute faces as well actually. Big brown eyes and long eyelashes!

After the camel farm, and a few more hours driving, we had a bit of an explore of Kata Tjuta on the Valley of the Winds walk. Kata Tjuta is also called the Olgas and is another sacred aboriginal site which has many stories around it. We had a bit of a climb, in the middle of the day, so it was REALLY hot. Guess who felt rather ill? Yes, the only pom on the tour, that would be me! I managed to make the walk, but ended up hurling my lunch up after a bit of a bumpy ride on the bus :(

Felt extremely rubbish for the rest of the day, needless to say, which didn't make me feel very good about the rest of the tour! If I was going to hurl (probably a combination of the heat, getting bumped around on a tour bus (I used to get really travel sick when I was younger) and only having salad for lunch) on the first day, then what was going to happen for the rest of the tour??

Afterwards, we also drove out to Uluru to watch the sun set over it, which was pretty amazing! Hoards of other people there as well as us, but it was just very magical. I couldn't stop looking at it because it changes with every different shaft of light that hits it.

Another thing that is extremely annoying out in the desert in Summer is the amount of bloody flies that are around! They just don't leave you alone for one second! I felt like Pig Pen from Snoopy, it was that bad, seriously!! The unrelenting heat, the 3 trillion flies, what on earth was I doing out in the desert in the Summer? The only good thing about being out there was that there weren't so many tourists around. You could actually get photos of Uluru and Kata Tjuta without another 20 tourists in the way!

After the sun set, we headed back to camp for dinner and some rest as we were told that we had to get up at 4am (what??!!) to catch sunrise over Uluru!! 4am? That's not morning, that's still night time!!

We were also given the option of sleeping out under the stars, but my poor wrecked body badly wanted a proper bed to sleep in after its long day of travelling, climbing, walking, and chucking up! We were assured that we could sleep outside on the other 2 nights too, so I thought I would have another opportunity to do so.

So, I took myself off to bed, hoping that I'd actually wake up at 4 in the morning as we had another long day ahead of us!