The above picture was taken from the plane as we were landing into Uluru. It is the largest free standing rock in the world. It is made of sandstone and we will be getting up close and personal tomorrow. But we had to get there first. We started in Melbourne and flew with Jetstar. They have strict limits on the amount of luggage which we exceeded. So we had to talk to the desk folks who tried to figure out how to give us credit for the remaining 10 kilos that we were due. They did not want to have to charge us double for the extra bags. This process took so long that the manager finally said just let them on for free! Great news for us. The flight was 2.5 hours and the seats made it seem like 4 hours, buttocks torturous. As we got in to the Uluru area we could see the rock out of our windows. Very nice indeed. We got checked in to our apartment, went to the IGA and bought dinner. We have an excursion tonight and we did not want to leave dinner up to chance. Between shopping and dinner we had a drink and listened to some digeridoo lessons. After that we were off to our sunset Uluru view and the Field of Light Experience. A big bus came and took us to a tall sand dune overlooking Uluru. There were drinks; beer red wine and champagne. There were snacks: kangaroo sliders, sweet potato on parmesan crusts and a bleu cheese petti fore. There was fun conversation: Donna and Miguel were here for a visit from their home on the east coast of Australia. They were funny and we had a blast talking with them. Then as the sun set we walked down hill into the Field of Light. It is a massive solar powered array of LED's and fiber optics spanning four football fields. The lights change color and waves of energy radiate here and there. We strolled along the pathways, keeping care to walk on the winding and uneven surface without tripping. Strolling that is until it started to rain. Then we tried to pick up the pace but it was very dark and hard to see. All turned out fine as we reached the end relatively dry and reboarded the bus. It was going to be a really early excursion the next morning so we went straight to bed.
Our lodgings for the next two days
Two stories and two bedrooms
With a kitchen too
A Yellow Throated Miner
Crested Pigeon
Outlandish outfits
Insane headwear
This looks OK now but when her parasol was open...
Digeridoo lessons
Grooming time for the crested
The resort area had a museum too
Lots of local flowering plants
Banksias no doubt
This was a new one
We arrived at our sunset loaction
The rock was off in the distance
The sunset was very intense
Deep reds the middle red
It was a bit too cloudy to pick up the sunset on the rock
A bit blurry but it gives the scale to the work
The colors seemed to match the sky
As far as we could see there were lights
But a shower came up
everybody got wet
not that it bothered us, we had our rain gear
Dry and happy
The lights spread out for a long way
Our new friends, Donna and Miguel from the Gold Coast
It has been 147 days since we began our Migration
