We got up early again…ugh! But, so very worth it. We got a quick breakfast at 4:15 in the morning and made our way into the national park.
Because Uluru is known for its beautiful color changes during the day, there is both a sunset and sunrise viewing area. We made our way to the sunrise viewing area of course.
We got there early and I set up my GoPro to do a time lapse of the sunrise.
The sunlight reflecting off of rock gave off beautiful colors. It was definitely worth it to wake up early for this sight. I took a bunch of pics with this red rock and so many more over the next 24 hours…
From there, we headed to the base of the rock to walk around the rim, which is normally a 10 km hike. However, this morning some of it was closed because of large puddles, so we didn’t get to walk the whole thing.
It was stunning to get closer to this red rock and see how imperfect it was up close. From far away, it looks so round and red. But, there are many colors on this rock and many holes and hidden caves. It felt like a intimate look at Uluru.
From there, we headed back to our accommodations to relax a little before our helicopter ride to see a whole other side of Uluru Kata-tjuta National Park.
We were picked up a little after lunch time to make our way to the helicopter ride.
We headed up and made our first stop to see Kata-Tjuta!
From there, we made our way to see Uluru!
I LOVED seeing the rocks from the ariel view because it gave you another view of these massive monolithic red rocks in the middle of Australia.
We then made it back to the accommodation in time to get all dressed up for our special event tonight to end this Outback adventure. We actually got to put on makeup and tried to care about what we looked like, which was a first for basically this entire trip.
At 6:15 pm, we left our accommodations to go back into the national park for a campagne sunset. We arrived at the sunset viewing area and I again set up my camera to take a video of it all. Unfortunately, the battery was dead so I didn’t get the whole sunset…
But, we enjoyed some bubbly and snacks! Most importantly, I discovered beetroot humus, which is insanely good! Haha
We took lots of group pictures, to make sure we would remember this moment. We were so happy to be together and to have met each other.
We got back on the bus and sang our new favorite song: home among the gum tree! It’s an Australian fave and we learned all the dance moves. Now it is stuck in my head…
We headed back to the bar at our accommodations and danced until late. Some of us would be continuing on to the second leg of the trip on the east coast, and some of us would not. We had all survived the conditions of the outback and just didn’t want to say goodbye.