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Set out early from Alice towards Kings Canyon. We got there a bit after lunch and climbed up to the top of the canyon and did the rim walk...it was a pretty cool canyon. After the hike we had to drive a few more hours to get to Yulara which is the town near Uluru. We camped there and got rained on in our swags.
The next morning we were up early to see the sun rise on Uluru but it was cloudy and rainy so there wasn't much of a sunrise. They say less than 1% of visitors see Uluru in the rain so we're actually special. Did the hike around the base...its a huge rock! The base walk is about 10kms and it was cool to see it from a bunch of different angles. Then we went a bit down the road to Kata Tjuta which is one of the other rock formations and did a little hike. By this time the rain had picked up and was being wind blown into us so that it was actually painful...not the kind of weather you expect in the desert! After lunch the rain continued to dump and we eventually started to head back to the rock when there were a couple breaks in the sky. As we were just getting there a rainbow started to form and it ended up being perhaps the most intense rainbow I've ever seen directly over Uluru. It was amazing and lasted for about three minutes...our timing was incredibly lucky. Uluru also had hundreds of waterfalls cascading down from all the rainfall which was really cool...at this point I did feel special. For sunset the clouds broke up enough that we got some great red light on the rock. After diner and a campfire, another attempt at sleeping outside in a swag was thwarted in the middle of the night by rain.
On Friday it was quite a long drive from Yulara across the NT/South Australia border through the desert and not a whole lot else. We ended up in the later afternoon in Coober Pedy which is the opal mining capital of the world...more than 80% of the world's opals come from there. In the middle of the outback there it gets hot in the summer, like 120s and 130s at times so over half of the town is actually underground to keep cool. Coober Pedy translates from the local aboriginal language to something like "white man's hole in the ground." We stayed underground at this place which was quite a novelty. Had dinner and went to an underground pub for a few beers.
Saturday we spent a bit of the morning in Coober Pedy digging for opals. I came up empty but did find a piece of glass with some interesting color on it that I for a few brief moments thought was a black opal that would make me rich. Back on the road driving through a lot of empty terrain. Went by a former joint US/UK missile testing ground...I can see why they placed it there. Ended up in a little place a the foot of the Flinders mountain range called Quorn for the night.
Sunday was a pretty full day of hiking in the Flinders range which was great. In the morning we took a short hike to the Yourambulla caves which has a bunch of aboriginal artwork on the walls. After lunch we took a tough hike up a mountain called Ohlssen Bagge which is part of the Wilpena Pound. The Wilpena Pound is an area of land that is basically circled by mountain peaks all the way around. The views were great and of course the mountains are somewhat vertically challenged by the world's standards but they have a very craggy rugged look which fit perfectly with the bitter wind and cold we had at the top.
On Monday we took a morning hike in the Flinders to the top of a place called The Dutchman's Stern named because I guess it looks like the stern of a ship. Nice views from the top. After lunch we hit the road towards Adelaide taking the scenic way through the Clare Valley which is one of SA's big wine areas. It was a pretty drive and didn't take all that long to get into Adelaide. We went out for dinner and some drinks to celebrate the end of the trip.
Tuesday I spent the morning walking around Adelaide...its a very clean city with lots of gardens and parks. It has a bit of a sleepy feel to it also which I like. After seeing what I could in a few hours I got myself to the airport and onto my flight back to Sydney. 40 days blows by pretty quickly...it was a great trip!!
