We got up early in the morning and headed off to the rock...

Upon arrival, we were told the climb was shut due to high wind speed at the top. We had made the decision to do the climb, but were quite happy to hear the news, as it meant less exercise for us to do - not that we're lazy or anything... :oP

Having learned valuable lessons from the Flinders, we slathered ourselves in our highest factor suncream, took heaps of water, and hit the trail.
The walk is 8km around the base of Ayres Rock, and gives you the chance to see it up close and personal. Just to prove we made it, here's picture proof that we got to the halfway point and were still standing!.
The rock isn't as smooth as you'd think from looking at it from a distance. It's full of texture and the rock itself doesn't just change colour during sunrise and set. During the walk around it, it changed shade even as we were walking towards certain bits. Here's a close up so you can see a bit ofdetail, and another withmore detail. The walk itself was pretty chilled out and there are signs all over it telling you the significance of certain areas (but no photos allowed, so you'll have to visit it yourself to see them).
After the base walk, we went to the visitors centre and looked at their displays full of information on the local Aborigional culture and read the visitors book which was full of letters from past visitors returning rocks from the area after hearing that rocks taken from Ulhuru are cursed. Not too sure on the curse, but we didn't take any rocks anyway :o)

We then headed over to The Olgas, and had a minimooch around before heading off to Alice Springs.