On the way back from my shower this morning I saw our European cyclist with a passion for the bathroom scrubbing the plastic floor of his tent. Hmm, I thought, I’ve never done that in the seven years we have owned our tent, I must remember to do that one day.
We drove out to Kata Tjuta to take a look and do the walks. The first walk we did was the Valley of the Winds, about 7.5 kilometres in total length. The first lookout is around 800 metres from the start and looks down into a green valley with a rim of red rock. The track continues another kilometre or so until it gets to a junction. It then loops 5.4 Kilometres around a large rock face, and part of the way around is the second look out. After a break enjoying the view it is time to continue back through the valley to the start of the loop.
The walk, although very busy, did have a sense of loneliness about it. It is challenging scrambling up and over rocks and small rock faces all the time, and is quite awe-inspiring with the grand rock walls of Kata Tjuta all around you. The part of the track leading to the second lookout is through a narrow canyon with red and black sides and a bright green floor with a perfect blue ceiling. The colour contrast is simply stunning. Even with the numbers of people on the track we managed to stay almost on our own as we walked, just catching up to groups from time to time and passing them by after a quick conversation.
The view from the second lookout is even more stunning than the first, you feel you have just found some hidden world and looking down on the valley floor it’s not hard to imagine that dinosaurs could still be roaming there.
This was a very satisfying walk and we thoroughly enjoyed it, from here we went to Walpa Gorge which was a much shorter walk, this time about two kilometres return. After that it was definitely time for something to eat and a cold beer. This time we did bring our esky and so we sat and watched people come and go at a picnic spot while we munched on our lunch. We got back to camp around four O’clock and this was time to clean up before going out to our evening dinner at the “Sounds of Silence”.
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