Different shades of Uluru – First morning in Central Australia

One of the things we wanted to do while at Yulara and Uluru was try to do sunrise and sunset each day. We knew it would be tiring, but we really thought it would be worth it.

It really was.

Sunrise at Uluru

We had picked out the place we wanted to do sunrise the night before. We knew it would take us about 45 minutes to get there. On the way the dream or hope was that we would be the only ones there.

We talked as we drove there about that morning we had at the Wanaka Tree in New Zealand and how there were over 200 people there. We did not want that.

We were so excited that we would finally be taking photos of the rock and at sunrise.

We arrived.

Well, we weren’t the only ones there.

They had some deck-type things for people to stand and watch, or stand and photograph, but we went the other way so we were on the ground in front of them all. We still had a great view of Uluru. Actually, once the sun had risen I went for a walk up to those stands and it would have been really hard to take photos there without getting people in them. I do think we did the right thing. We didn’t have to fight for our space and we could move around a bit. Which I am sure you will be able to tell in the photos.

It was so cold. I had a jacket on, but since it was supposed to get really warm that day I only had on 3/4 length pants. I didn’t have gloves and my hands were freezing. I had heard that it got cold there overnight, but didn’t think it would get that cold. Just goes to show, always be prepared.

I’m going to show you some of the photos now. There aren’t many. Most were taken with the Fujifilm GFX50S II, one with my phone and the others were taken with my X-S10 and the Tamron 18-300mm.

You hear all the time how the colours change at Uluru. I don’t think I really believed it, but I guess they do. This is just from one morning.

I had a lot more photos from this day, but there were too many to do in one post, so I decided to break it up into 3 posts. I will try and get the next one done in the next couple of days. It is nice to be blogging again like this.

The Lost Camel

I told you the other day I would tell you more about the Lost Camel, which was the place we stayed in at Yulara.

Besides the price and the basic rooms, there were a lot of things I didn’t like about it. I hardly slept when I was there. We stayed for 3 nights, and I think I got a fairly decent night’s sleep on the last one.

They were weird rooms. They had no windows, not really. You had the door at one end, and then at the other was the bathroom. Actually, there was a separate toilet and shower room with a basin on the inside of the room. There was frosted glass to the outside in those, and then the doors were frosted glass as well. So the “natural” light came through those.

There were no blinds or anything so light poured through them during the day and at night. Plus there were lights at each front door to the rooms and it shone all around the cracks in the doorway. Not to mention through the spy hole. I am used to sleeping in complete darkness and it was rough trying to sleep in a room that had so much light in it.

The other problem I had was the noise. I get not everyone wants to get up at sunrise, but should people not think about anyone but themselves when they are somewhere like that? Right outside my room was a common area where people could smoke. So I had that in my face every time I left my room. Plus people sat out there in the evenings and talked, or yelled, I don’t know. One night there was a woman who laughed like a hyena every 5 to 10 minutes and it was very loud.

On top of that, I had the room that was right next to the cleaners and they didn’t understand the concept of being quiet either. Their trolleys made so much noise. Everything made so much noise.

When you are paying almost $300 a night, you want to be able to sleep. Not me. Thank goodness it was only 3 nights.

Have you noticed the new theme?

Changes are happening.

I want to change things up and will be doing something different soon. I don’t want to talk about it just yet, but it meant I would need a new theme that would allow me more options.

I am still trying to work out this one. It has been a bit of a struggle, but hopefully, I will get it all sorted out soon. One thing I have to work out is how to change the gallery settings. I don’t like the way the photos are displayed in this one.

I know there are things people won’t like, but hopefully, you can all hang on and let me work it out. One thing I need to know is if the writing in this blog post is too small. Should I make it slightly larger?

So I hope you will be patient with me.