July 10

Saturday
Took nearly $60 for 3/4 of a gas tank to fill the rental car. Dropped it off, navigated through the Cairns airport--which isn't finished yet but is small enough that that's not a problem--and caught the flight from Cairns to Ayers Rock. The land there really is red, with ridges like narrow sand dunes, dotted with green. There are several different hotels on a loop of road, near the airport, but they're all owner by the same company. We're told they've had record cold (I needed a sweater at night) and record rain. There's a notice that people are not allowed to climb the rock because there's more than a 5% chance of rain. We sign up, $282 for the two of us, for a bus tour around the Olgas, a walk through the gorge, and a sunset view of Uluru, total about 4 hours. There are a mix of people on the bus: a Spanish couple, a couple of French families, a Portuguese lade who reminded me of Barbra except shorter, and a 6ft tall German girl with thistledown hair and a permanent smile. Her name, we found, was Kirsten, pronounced "Care steen"; she was working at a private school in Melbourne teaching German and art. I realized the Australians tell what city they're from; other people only tell what country they're from, "Germany" or "Indonesia" but not anyhing more specific; Josh and I say that "we're from Virginia, in the US."


We all de-bus at the Gorge and walk up the trail between the two mountains on either side; there are vertical cliff faces about 500 meters high. These mountains are conglomerate, basically natural concrete with a mix of stones from egg to melon size. There are lumps of it, ranging in size from a car to a small house, which have popped out of the cliff walls and are now lying on the gorge floor. Best not to stand too near the cliff. We board the bus again and go to a spot west of Uluru. There are about 20 buses parked here, and each has a table with wine and some sort of snack; we have trail mix and peanuts, but the next table over has a potful of curry. We take pictures of Uluru every few minutes, as the sun sets and the Rock changes colors from red-brown to red to shadowed purple. Meanwhile we feed the pigeons and magpies.

Back to the hotel for a shower and dinner. There's a camp-like covered area with picnic tables; if you want to spend $30 or so you can pick out your steaks and grill them yourself, but Josh and I decide on Kangaroo wraps with barbecue sauce. I find the kangaroo meat to be tough so I offer other half of mine to Josh, who wolfs it down. Kirsten and her Portuguese friend arrive and we invite them to share our table. Josh crashes around 8pm; I stay and we talk about Portugal, and the world cup, and listen to the guitarist. Eventually we join the students on the dance floor, and dance with them for an hour or so. A couple of Australian girls join us; each of them separately advises me to loosen up. This seems to be a recurring theme.

The two ladies with ne are taking a dawn tour which leaves at 6:15am, so when the guitarist finishes at 11pm they say goodnight; the Portuguese lady does the kiss-on-each-cheek thing, which takes me completely by surprise; Kirsten gives me a handshake; they both dart off, presumably to bed. I head back towards our room but stop for a while to look at the stars, the Southern Cross and the Milky Way.