Our final leg - Ayers Rock

Sorry for the delay! It's been busy since our visitors have left. In Cairns, we parted ways from Adam and Brandon who went back to the US. The rest of the crew caught a flight to Ayers Rock. We went from luscious green lands of Queensland and landed in an alien part of the country. The ground was mostly red, very flat and little vegetation. We had landed in the Northern Territory.

After renting our super van, we drove immediately to the Olgas, which is a rock formation near Ayers Rock. Here we are approaching the Olgas.


Before we went, we were warned of the number of flies in this part of the country. We ended up having to constantly wear these fly nets on our head.


Eddie braved without his net, but look at the number of flies are on his and Jim's back. Gross! Even if you moved around, they would instantly come back and land on you again.


Here we are at the beginning of our hike. We were excited that it was cloudy otherwise it would have been steaming hot.


Along th trail, there were some pretty cool views of the surrounding rocks and land.


Finally, we reached a halfway point in the hike where we were in valley.


The only problem with the hike was that we started around 11 AM. We didn't have too much water or food, but started on a long hike. We rationed out Kit Kats when we were all finally starving. After the hike, we drove to the Sunset viewing spot for the Olgas. Since the weather had cleared out, it was amazing to see the Olgas after we had hiked through it.


We checked into our hotel, which was the cheapest place in the whole "resort" area. After finally feeding our stomaches with lunch, we decided to go to the grocery store to stock up on food. We ended up deciding that we'd eat some ramen for dinner to save some money. Look at all the ramen!


We finally went to Ayers Rock for sunset. This rock is HUGE.

As the sun was slowly going down, we ended up taking many different photos in front of the rock. This was our girls only photo, lifting Elaine up.


This was the guys only photo.


The rock changed colors as the sun went down and we got together to take a normal group photo.


While we watched the sunset, we feasted on some cheese and crackers with little saucer cups of wine. We didn't have any real cups so we had to improvise with whatever we could find at our "hotel".

After the sun had gone down, we drove back to the hotel and played many rounds of dominos until late in the evening. Then we had to get up at the crack of dawn to go watch sunrise at Ayers Rock. When we arrived at the viewing area, the moon was still visible.


The viewing areas allow you to see the rock change colors as the sun goes up or down. Therefore if you turn around from the rock, there are usually some impressive sky photos.


The sunrise was not as exciting as the sunset, but we were now at the rock. We went to the Cultural Centre to learn more about the history of Ayers Rock before walking a bit around the base of the rock. Here was a rock formation near a watering hole that looked like a heart.


We hadn't seen too many creatures in the wild at Ayers Rock until the last hour we were there. As we walked back to the car, we were able to see this lizard on a rock.


This is a photo of the crazy big ant we saw. Eddie was brave enough to stick out his foot to get the money shot.


We decided to drive around the whole rock and found this dingo on the side of the road. Dingos are famous for being rabid and stealing babies and eating them. We were fascinated by him, but ended up leaving him on the side of the road.


Finally, it was the end of our vacation with our friends. We went to the airport to fly back to Sydney. Thanks so much for visiting. It was awesome!

Last weekend, I went to Melbourne for the long weekend to spend some time with David. I forgot to bring the camera, but we had a pretty good weekend. We explored the city some more as well as rented a car to drive to the Macedon Ranges. It's considered spa country because of the number of spas in the area. The spas were all opened due to the mineral springs in the area. First, we went to Hanging Rock, which is a volcanic rock formation and walked around there. Then we visited a small winery before we went to the town. It had been raining on and off all day, but we decided to take a short hike to one of the springs. The spring ended up being completely disappointing. It was just a well with a pump that allowed you to taste the metallic water. On our way back, it started downpouring on us, BUT the only highlight was that we got to see a live echidna! After we got drenched, we went to the spa for our treatments before we finally drove back to Melbourne.

On Sunday, we went to the outlet malls and then to a footy match. Apparently, footy in Victoria means Aussie Rules Football, but footy in Sydney means Rugby. We got to cheer on the Sydney team before it ended up in a DRAW! Yes, that's right, they have draws in their games. It made the end of the game very exciting since Sydney came back to almost win, but in the end all of the fans left slightly dejected. The best part of Sunday was that we had dinner at Nobu in the casino. The food was delicious.

Since I've been working with so many locals, I've decided to start posting about the interesting phrases that I learn at work. I learn at least 1 every 2-3 days. My very first one was "Script". Since Australians hate using long words, they've shortened the word Prescription to Script. It's used like "I'm going to go pick up a script" and even the receipt has the word "script" printed on it!