Day 179 (Saturday 07/05) - Adventure Tours Day 6

Wake up at 4:15am.
Leave at 5:45am.

Heading to Uluru to see the sunrise.
Unfortunately the sky is cloudy, see don't really see the sun rise.
It's still beautiful though.

After that, we head to the base of the Rock, to see if we can go for the climb, but as there are risks of rain, the climbing is closed.
So we go for the Base Walk, a 9km long walk trail that goes around the Rock, with Kade, Liv & Tur.
(Liz & Tom left earlier, as they were not wishing to do the climbing)
The walk is really nice, sometimes we're really close to the monolith and can see some caves with aboriginal paintings, sometimes the trail goes a bit away from it, to give us a wider view. It's really impressive (and the rock is not just a simple block as it seems, it's a very complex shape with lots of holes and bumps).

(unfortunately some areas are sacred, and thus we can't take any pictures)
During the walk we see wild dogs. We thought they were dingos, but when showing the pictures later on to John, he will tell us that there are no real dingos in this area, but only breeded ones with dogs.

When we finish the loop around the Rock, we see that the climbing is now open (the sky has cleared).
As we really want to do it, John tells us that we can go as far as we can, but that we only have one hour, as we have a schedule to keep.
(the estimated required time to go up and come back is 2 hours)
We originally had the choice between the Base Walk or the climbing, and then time to go to the cultural centre.
We decided to skip the cultural centre and go for the climbing (John will go with Tom & Liz while we climb).
The climbing is really tough. Some parts are so steep that there's a chain to help.
The surface is slippery, I understand it can be very dangerous in certain conditions.
(apparently 35 people have already died while climbing ...)
It's hard, but very quickly the view gets amazing, it expands on endless flat landscape, with some peaks and hills.

With Kade, we almost get to the top within the given time (taking account of the time to return), we don't make it to the end, but it doesn't go much higher (up and down along the crest), so the views don't get much better.

After walking down we meet up with John, Liz & Tom, where John has prepared us some cake and mandarine.

We then head back to the camp for lunch (& shower).

We're having burgers with salad.

After lunch we go back on track, and after a while go offroad to reach a salt lake (the vehicle we're in can go almost anywhere, it's made for 4WD'ing - four wheel driving).
The salt lake isn't very interesting (and we've already seen one before with Luke), we don't stay there for long.

Just a bit further we stop to take a picture of Mt Corner, which looks a lot like Ayers Rock from the distance.

We then stop to pick some wood for tonight's fire.

Then we drive to Kings Canyon Resort, the place where we will stay for the night.

Once at the camp we cook dinner (curry), and light the fire.

After eating, we stay a bit around the fire talking.
(Tom & John talk about many interesting things about Australia's history - colonisation and during the different wars)

After a while, I go to the neighbouring camp, where the others are.
Kade & Liz are already there, playing cards with the Norwegian girls.
I go to sit around the fire where the 2 Flemish girls and Byron are. We stay there for a while.
We then all get inside, in the kitchen area, to join the others and play cards.

We go back to our camp to sleep quite early.
(I share the a tent with Kade, where again we have real beds with matresses)

In the room there's a "Daddy Long Legs", a spider that is apparently the most dangerous one, but that can't bite humans due to it small "teeth", but kills all the other spiders ... Good news !