rise and shine: a desert sunrise
The desert morning was freezing, it was pitch black except for the moon and the “green” lights lining the path directing us to the viewing platforms. Rugged up, we trudged up the slope to position ourselves for an uninterrupted view of Uluru at sunrise. It was worth every numb finger, it was worth every shiver, it was worth waking up at 4.30am. As the sun crept over the horizon in the east behind us, Uluru began changing colour.
With the sunrise day tour that we booked with AAT Kings, we were spoilt (and fortunate) enough to be the only two who had booked the Cultural Walk around Uluru. With two tour guides in tow, we were given a very personal tour of the base of Uluru. We walked half the base to Mutitjulu waterhole and also did the Mala Walk before finishing up at the Cultural Centre which has some educational and very fascinating exhibits on display. Walking alongside Uluru – we learnt a great deal about Aboriginal history. But all the time, we were looking up, and up at this massive monolith, only to see people as little as ants walking atop it! One of the tour guides, the one on our Kata Tjuta day trip in fact, provided a great “food-for-thought” statement before he sent the group on our self-guided walk. In so many words, he basically put it to us to ponder how we treat sacred sites such as churches and temples, and therefore why should these sacred sites be treated any different?
Although there is so much left for us to still explore in this area, this was an incredible taster to what the Australian wilderness has to offer. To think it has taken us this long to see Uluru, we can only get excited of what’s next on our Australia to-do list. But before long, we will probably fall back to our old habits of travelling further afield before we try and soak up some more of our own backyard!
View more photos of our trips at Photo Gallery.
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a desert sunset
We couldn’t have asked for better weather while we were in the Red Centre. The skies were blue, the days were warm, there were cool breezes and nights were mild. April is definitely a great time to go where you can escape from apparently large number of tourists and searing unforgiving desert temperatures. One thing you can’t escape from though are the flies. Be prepared by bringing a fly net to put over your wide brimmed hat, or be prepared to spend a lot of the sunlit hours brushing and swotting them away from your face.
Kata Tjuta (known to some as Mount Olga or The Olgas) means “many heads”. Here we were to witness a sunset with drinks and nibblies organised by the tour operators, AAT Kings. With the camera perched, we were ready to capture the many shades of the beautiful rock formation. And how gorgeous they were. The photos don’t do them justice but then again neither can our words.
View more photos of our trips at Photo Gallery.
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a little luxury in the red centre
On countless occasions, we have spoken to people we meet on our travels overseas who have seen more of our country than we have. In conversation, we sheepishly confess that we haven’t seen the Great Ocean Road, Cairns, Broome or Uluru. And then more often than not the very same people have seen less of their home country than we have. Is it possibly because we forget the wonders we have in our own backyard or simply take it for granted that its not that far away and will always be there? For us, it is a little bit of both. We had this notion that we would travel further afield and do the “harder” trips while we are “young” and save the “easier” ones for when we get “older”. But its all relative and subjective so why delay what you really want to do because of such perceptions!
So rewind to the beginning of the year when we were thinking of a place to getaway, close enough to squeeze into 4 days but far enough for us to feel like we had a holiday. Flights directly to Yulara and 3 nights at Sails in the Desert were booked. Our review of the hotel can be found on TripAdvisor – link
Now fast forward to the end of April, we were on that Qantas flight flying towards the centre of Australia, eagerly peaking out the windows to sneak a peak of anything and there it was, or more like, there they were: Uluru and the Kata Tjuta sitting tall on the red desert sand. Earth so red that it was quite a sight.
The Sounds of Silence dinner (priced at $188 per head) is such a spectacular experience. It all starts with watching the sunset over Uluru and Kata Tjuta while enjoying a cultural Aboriginal dance before sitting down to a buffet dinner under the stars. The full moon decided to join us that night along with a sky-full of stars as the sounds of a didgeridoo were played.
In between, main and dessert, an astronomer dazzled us with information about the night sky and one of our biggest highlights was seeing Saturn and its rings in the high powered telescope that was set up. It was extraordinary! Moments like these when you get to meet other like-minded travellers adds to the experience. The food was delicious, with a good variety and the dessert spread deserves a mention.
View more photos of our trips at Photo Gallery.
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m-i-c-k-e-y-m-o-u-s-e: a week in Disneyworld
To set the scene for this post, look at the title again and sing it…. in the tune that is oh so familiar!
Yes we know – we are big kids! Okay, so we admit it – the whole reason we were in the area was to visit DisneyWorld not to do our Caribbean cruise at all. Hearing and reading other people’s stories we figured that we would only want to do this once in our lives and to do it properly so we booked to stay at the Disney All-Star Music Resort for 11 nights (reviewed at Tripadvisor so we won’t talk about it here).
Getting to Orlando in itself was an interesting experience though. We had Amtrak train tickets from Fort Lauderdale to Orlando, except upon arriving at the train station, there was track work as it was the weekend. Hang on – were we back in Sydney? Man, we think back to how much flack public transport in Sydney get yet here at Fort Lauderdale station, the passengers were told nothing at all. We were told to just stand “there” (which was really nowhere in particular) and that a bus was coming! The ticketing and luggage staff could barely squeeze a smile from their lips, let alone make eye contact or answer any questions meaningfully.
So all we knew was that instead of the train, we were going to be chauffeured to Orlando in coaches. What we learnt by the end of the trip is that it would take us approximately 3 and a half hours which wasn’t significantly different from the train but we prefer rail travel over bus travel any day. Fortunately, we also got one pit stop for food and a toilet break so it wasn’t all bad 😉 Arriving into Orlando, we were dropped off at the train station with our luggage, which was in the middle of nowhere. Now, how to get to DisneyWorld?! There was a taxi rank and as we made our way over, we were intercepted by “Amtrak” transfer shuttles who would get us to the resort at a flat fee of $30USD which we thought seemed reasonable. We had nothing else to compare to so we will never really know.
DisneyWorld is in a league of its own! We have visited Disney Land in LA and Paris and had heard that World was huge but to what scale? One could never really comprehend until you get there. We bought 8-day Park-Hopper Passes and we put them to good use. It is simply not possible to do one theme park in one day. We were so fortunate to have arrived just after New Year’s (5th of Jan to be precise) and the holiday crowds had obviously headed home by then. The longest ride we had to wait in line for was the “Winnie the Pooh” one in Magic Kingdom. The rides are getting more interactive these days: the Toy Story rides have you shooting for points as you travel through the ride. We had so much fun on the Buzz Lightyear 3D ride, we went on it 4 times. So in those 8 days at the theme parks, we enjoyed character breakfasts and lunches, themed dinners, saw parades, went on rides, enjoyed the shows and ate and shopped for Disney-themed products!
If you happen to be anti-Disney though, never fear – there are so many other attractions in the area. On our other days from the theme parks, we spent at SeaWorld, Kennedy Space Center and Downtown Disney. The advantage of spending almost one and a half weeks in the resort was that we had down time and believe it or not, we didn’t get theme-parked-out!
View more photos of our trips at Photo Gallery.
wise monkeys abroad 