March 10 – Uluru to Port Douglas

March 10, 2016 – Uluru, Kata Tjuta, flight to Cairns, bus to Port Douglas
I had a fairly bad nights sleep because I kept waking up since I didn’t trust that my alarm would go off at 5 am. It did go off.
At 5:40am our bus headed to the sunrise viewing area. Before we hiked in to get the best spots for taking pictures, the tour company had hot coffee and tea and biscuits for us. There were many places to stand and take pictures. I started out on a high platform but ended up down at ground level. Too many people up top. Sunrise was at 7:07 and as the sun came over the horizon Uluru started changing from a brown color to a bright orange-red. Shadows in the rock darkened too. It was great to watch.
We went back to the hotel for breakfast and to get our bags out. At 9:30 we headed to Kata Tjuta, a rock formation bigger than Uluru that is about 25 miles away. Kata Tjuta is stilled used for indigenous tribe ceremonies and is considered more spiritual than Uluru. There are only 2 places where non-indigenous can wal. We did a hike into the gorge. It was beautiful but the path had many loose rocks so I spent most of the time looking down. After the gorge, we hiked up to a view point between Uluru and Kata Tjuta to take pictures.
We had lunch and then headed to the airport for our flight to Cairns. When we arrive we will set our watches ahead 1/2 hour and our bus will take us to our hotel in Port Douglas. We got to our hotel about 8pm. It was pouring.
Tomorrow is our day out at the Great Barrier Reef. We will have a catamaran that takes us out and we’ll be there most of the day.

No photos today because the internet at this hotel is very slow.  Keeps cancelling my uploads.  I’ll try to add them later in a separate entry.