If at First You Don't Succeed, Climb Another Mountain

Day 16:
This was another early morning (earlier than the day before if you can believe it) and another trip out to Uluru to find out if the climb was open. It wasn’t, so we had to decide what we were going to do for the rest of the day.

Since we’d been planning the trip, Jill had been mentioning another rock formation called Kata Tjuta or The Olgas. This particular formation is actually made up of 36 separate domes of rock and is larger in area, taller in height (by 200 meters), and more spiritually significant than Uluru. On the other hand, you can’t climb it, which probably contributes to it being relatively obscure.

There are two hikes at Kata Tjuta and the longer one of them, the Valley of the Winds walk, is temperature limited. Seeing as this was ideal for a morning walk, we headed on over. The walk itself hikes out to a lookout area near one of the domes and then splits. It loops around two of the large domes and returns to the lookout for the return to the trailhead.

The walk itself is a fair bit harder than the Uluru base walk as it has a lot of broken ground and you climb up and down some very steep stone paths. That being said, it’s amazingly rewarding. Because it is so difficult, we did most of the walk completely alone. Back in the canyons between the domes the scenery was absolutely beautiful and the second lookout had great views of the surrounding valley.

After the walk, Jill and I retired to our room for a siesta in the heat of the day. There was a good reason too, as we had a tour scheduled in the afternoon! Coincidently it was Kata Tjuta again! Before we’d traveled we’d scheduled a guided tour of Kata Tjuta complete with an outdoor meal under the stars. We knew that it was unlikely that we’d get to walk the Valley of the Winds on the tour (the tour started at 15.00, after the walk closed), so we weren’t going to get much overlap.

We were right. We had a very nice guide and did the other (easier) walk through the domes. The sun was going down and the clouds were coming up at this point, so the it was relatively cool during the hike. We got a champagne sunset and then a BBQ dinner under the stars. We both had a great time even though our day went from 4.30 in the morning to 23.00 at night.