My trip to the Northern Territory of Australia started with a three and a half hour flight. I always choose the window seat because it is practically impossible for me to sleep anywhere but a bed. As I watched trough the window for the whole flight I noticed that between Sydney and Ayers's rock airport there was absolutely nothing. I saw more than 1,000 kilometres of red sand and the only thing that came to my mind was that I was going to be in the middle of nowhere for a while. I couldn't believe I was travelling so far just to see a rock.
On my first day, I built my tent on a camping site and went to have something to eat. When the sun was about to set I drove to a viewing site to watch Uluru turn orange, Uluru is the biggest monolith on earth, that means that orange mountain is 1 piece of solid rock, it is literally the largest rock on earth.
Just when the sun started to set the rock became bright orange, it looked like it had it's own light from the inside, it was crazy. I couldn't wait to see how it looked from a closer distance.
What an amazing day 1 of my trip! I returned to my camping site in the night to sleep and I can tell that I had the coldest night of my life, I didn't expect that because in the day the temperature was around 27° C and in the night it dropped to almost 0° C and of course I didn't know that was possible.
The next day I woke up super early to see the sunrise, waking up that early was not difficult because I was wide awake for the whole night, the only thing I wanted to do was to get in the car and turn the air to the highest temperature possible.
The sunrise was a little bit of a disappointment comparing to the sunset, but it was definitely worth it because there was a full moon and that meant the moon sets at the exact same time the sun rises (really cool).
Hours later I started a hike around the rock, the rock is so big that the trail is around 10km long. The day was so good without any clouds. Walking around Uluru was definitely an experience, it's the only way to witness how big the rock is. The part that I found the most interesting was that the rock is considered sacred to the Yankunytjatjara and Pitjantjatjara people which are the traditional owners and guardians of the Uluru - Kata Tjuta National Park and they asked us not to climb the rock and to show respect. There were signs everywhere telling the people not to climb it and still there where tons of people climbing it, I think it is was very disrespectful from them because the rock was part of Indigenous religious traditions.
On day 3, I drove for around 3 hours to King's Canyon which was amazing. I made a long hike around the area and I saw really nice views of cliffs and red rocks. I camped there and the night was not as cold as in the first night.
Day 4 was a drive back to Uluru - Kata Tjuta National Park, my next stop was Kata Tjuta which is a rock formation similar to Uluru but in many pieces. I made a hike around it and I liked it a lot because it was so different to Uluru, Instead of only walking around it, this rock formations allowed us to walk between the giant rocks, it felt like walking between 2 giant orange walls. You can see them in the photos.
On the last night I went to an art installation called Fields of Light by the Artist Bruce Munro. I consisted on 50,000 flower like lights extended in the area of about seven football fields. It looked like a scene on the Avatar movie.
I had a really good time in this trip, I would totally recommend you to do it if possible, it is a way to see a completely different landscape than in Sydney, also it is a way to understand a different culture and their beliefs.
Bernardo Chavez Peon (Study Abroad Communications Ambassador, Autumn 2017)
Architecture
Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de México
Let me know what you think in the comments below, also if you have any questions let me know in the comments below!