Like an Oven

Day 14:
Day 14 was another travel day. We flew from Cairns to Uluru which was/is known as Ayers Rock. The Cairns airport wasn’t any better than a couple of days before, but thankfully the wait was short. During the flight we learned that there is something worse than a kid kicking your seat from behind.

Jill and I had the unlucky experience of having a single mother with two children sitting behind us. After a bit of kicking our seats, the mother dropped the tray tables down for her sons to play on. It turns out that when a kid starts banging up and down on these, it gets a lot more leverage than merely kicking; your entire seat starts rocking back and forth. Combined with near constant screaming, the flight wasn’t great.

On arrival we deplaned and had to walk across the tarmac. Damn was it hot! The one lucky thing here was that it’s a very dry heat (somewhere below 50% humidity) so it’s almost bearable. I do have to say that it immediately brought back memories of my childhood vacations in Nevada.

We picked up our hire car and made our way to the hotel. Jill once again picked a great one and save for a damn bush, we’d have a perfect view of the rock. But no matter, shortly after getting settled in, we decided to walk out to a lookout point and watch the sun set on the rock, and it did not disappoint. We got some great pictures, saw the changes of color, and generally had a fine evening alone to ourselves.

After a somewhat drunken dinner, we retired to bed since we had to be up before sunrise (which was at 5:37!) to climb the rock in the morning.

Jill Update:
Jill has some trepidation about climbing Uluru tomorrow and feels that I’m babying her too much. There’s some tension over this.