Ayers Rock Resort - Yulara

After a somewhat bewildered trip to Alice Springs, I'm not sure what we expected from our next destination at Uluru/Ayers Rock. It kinda seemed like one of those destinations you have to see, but at the same time wonder what's so great about a rock? And you think, but I've seen it already - it's on every postcard, every Aussie calendar, every t-shirt, every snow globe, every poster in every tourist shop. But still, there's something about this giant rock in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of Australia.

Visitors used to be able to stay at the base of this monumental monolith, however, because of the influx of visitors and out of respect for the local Aborigines who consider this a sacred site, there is one resort about 20 kilometres away. The resort, which is really a little self-contained municipal called Yulara, has all types of accommodation from campsites to luxury hotels. It has a post office, a supermarket, hair salon, tourist shop, news agent, various delis and restaurants including Ayers Wok Noodle Bar, and a loop road with a continuous shuttle connecting it all. 

After our long bus ride, we decided to stretch our legs and check out the sunset over the surrounding landscape of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. The resort offers various viewing areas so we took our map and headed towards one, but ended up somewhere completely different. Up on the mound, we could see Kata Tjuta in the distance, northwest of Uluru, with its 36 "mini" monoliths. 

Uluru, as promised, was highlighted various hues of red by the setting sun due the iron content of the stone rusting on surface after years of erosion.

The viewing area was a bit crowded, mostly couples wrapping around each other in order to keep warm as they stared off into the sunset - quite literally - so, we decided we had a full day of viewing the rock tomorrow to look forward to. We knew we had better head back to the hotel through the bushy dirt path before it became too dark to see what creatures were in our way.

Despite the amount of visitors - apparently it's always high season - it was rather quiet in general and from this, tranquility, you did get a sense that not only were you in the middle of nowhere, but you were in the presence of something great.