Monday 29 September 2014

Australia 2014 - (10) Alice Springs to Ayres Rock

After taking Ruby for her 1,000 km service (at 1,700 km) at Desert Edge Motorcycles in Alice and being served by the rather lovely smelling Dallas, I headed back down the Stuart Highway towards Ayres Rock. It was 10 am before I was on the road and the temperature was already extremely hot.

I had 443 km to cover to get to Ayres Rock and it just kept getting hotter. I had a 2 litre hydration pack on my back, a litre of Hydralyte in a bottle and another one litre bottle of water. By the time I got to Curtain Springs I’d sucked every one of these dry and even a chilled bottle of Powerade at the road house didn’t cool me down. In fact, I was starting to feel decidedly weak. Part of me thought I should just stay there the night and give up trying to get to Uluru for sunset, but the other part of me didn’t want to have to pitch my tent twice, so I pressed on.

When I eventually arrived in a heaving, sweaty mess, the girl at reception said, “Ah, it’s only 34.8 today, that’s nothing.” “We don’t even have temperatures that high in Scotland,” I replied, but she thought I was kidding.

I was completely exhausted by the time I’d put my tent up and even a cold shower didn’t really cool me down, so a trip to the base of the rock for sunset photos was out of the question. At least I’d managed to get some shots of Mt Conner on the way in.