Day 13 Part-1: Ayer's Rock - The Finale

Saturday, Feb 18th

"Reveille! Reveille! Reveille! All hands heave out and trice up. Reveille!" (traditional Navy wake-up call) 
Reveille was observed at 4:15 AM. Temperature was likely in the high 80’s, coolest time of day for Ayer’s Rock.

As an aside, Pat, Jack, Diane and Greg would probably have been observing sunrise over the Pacific at about that time.

Today’s Uluru mission was to observe sunrise at 6:32 AM, thus the early wake-up call. We departed from Longitude 131 along a bumpy dirt road and arrived at the park about 5:30 AM. Of the nine of us traveling out, some tried to sleep while others helped watch the road for critters. When we arrived at the sunrise viewing area there was no one home, just us. By 6:15 AM the buses had arrived and there were hundreds of similarly minded tourists waiting for the perfect sunrise picture. Promptly at 6:32 the sun rose in the eastern sky (Editorial note: Even in the southern hemisphere the sun rises in the east and sets in the west). I think it is fair to say that in the 20 minutes in and around sunrise there were some 30-40,000 digital photos taken of the sunrise, the crowd and Ayer’s Rock. Once the event was over there was a rushing sound, similar to a vacuum as tourists leaped aboard buses and headed on to the next venue; that is of course except for the four Japanese tourists that had been left behind. Our guide scooped up the abandoned tourists and promptly delivered them to the next stop and an embarrassed tour operator.

What followed was our third lesson in native culture. We again toured Uluru by van and on foot. Turned out that today, the rock was open to climbers from 6:30 to 8:00 AM, missed that opportunity but did see people on the slope. Part of the morning’s discussion centered around the purposes and differences of “returning” and “non-returning” boomerangs. It’s fairly simple; the “non-returning” does not come back, you have to go pick it up. 

Following our walk we were off to the park aboriginal cultural center aka park store. For our arrival,  the Longitude staff had laid out a breakfast of fruit, croissant sandwiches, juice and coffee.

By 10:30 AM we were back at the lodge and ready to pack out. We had a couple of hours for a nice lunch, some more wine, and working on blogs, Facebook, emails, Skypeing and the other important aspects of 21^st century life. By 3:30 PM we were winging our way eastward to the MART 2012 rendezvous.