Yulara (for Mar. 2)

We took a cab to the airport and departed about 10 AM. We gained half an hour entering a new time zone, arriving about 12:15. The hotel we were booked into was doing some renovations, so we were upgraded to another in the same resort complex. We were all settled in by 1:30 and set out on a brief tour of the facilities to get the lay of the land and returned to our room for some planning. Our first scheduled tour isn’t until 2:45 tomorrow afternoon, so we have to decide what to do with ourselves.

Leaving Cairns, we flew over the Atherton Tablelands, which I described the day we arrived in Cairns by car. After that, I only saw one small patch of cultivated land the whole way here. There may have been some cattle grazing, but I can’t say for sure. After the tableland, you could see a dappling of dark green trees and bushes on a background of light green grass or red and sand coloured earth. Farther west, the trees and bushes ran out. But farther west again, when the grass had also run out, you could see that the dessert had its own green vegetation against the red and sand background. On landing, it was much like Arizona. The plants were different, but there was plenty of life in this dessert too. We overflew several rivers – of sand - with some potholes of water. It seems like most of the rivers in this part of the country are dry most of the time, but flood for a few days after a rainstorm.

The town here is called Yulara or Ayers Rock Resort. It is over 40 degrees here, but it doesn’t feel as hot as Cairns did with the high humidity. We have gone from stifling heat to searing heat. They have the most annoying little black flies here. They don’t bite, but they love buzzing around your head and landing on your face. All the stores are doing a booming business in mosquito nets that you put over your head.

Celeste felt a headache coming on, so she rested for a bit while I read all the resort info and started today’s blog. Later we did another repacking job. The next leg of our trip is by bus. They limit you to one suitcase up to 50 pounds and one carry-on. Our previous efforts were aimed at this target, but the airline labeled my bag as 26 kilos, about 57 pounds, so we tried to transfer some weight to Celeste’s bag. We also decided to mail some of our gifts home to make a little more room in our suitcases. They say it should take 2-3 weeks, so they may arrive before we do. Tom, please do whatever is necessary when they arrive and we will square up on our return. Ideally, they arrive late enough that we can pick them up after our return.


Celeste still wasn’t feeling great, so I went out and took a few pictures of the resort and of Uluru (Ayers Rock) from a viewpoint on the resort. On my return, we had a bite to eat and checked out some of the souvenir shops in the resort’s shopping area, then set out on the resort shuttle to check out the night spot that our bus driver had suggested. We arrived after 8 and the entertainer was singing and playing guitar. He was pretty loud and not that good, so we found a quieter corner and had a beer. Clearly, this is the place where the action is because all the young people are staying in backpacker/hostel/dormitory style accommodation here. By about 8:30 we old folks had had enough action for one night, so we hopped the bus back to our hotel and squeezed in a late night swim. It was still pretty warm, so I took along my clock that measures temperature. It read 33 degrees after 9 pm and it had been dark since 7:30. That cool dip sure was refreshing! And the flies hide out as soon as it gets dark. A little more blogging and we were off to bed.