Three weeks with my brother - Nicholas Sparks [67]
CHAPTER 11
Ayers Rock, Australia
February 2–3
Unless you travel over the Pacific, it’s hard to fathom how large the ocean actually is. We’d flown four hours to reach Easter Island, and another seven hours to Rarotonga. Reaching Brisbane, Australia, took another seven hours, during which we crossed over the international date line, and from there we still had another three hours until we finally reached Ayers Rock, in the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, in the middle of the Australian outback.
Passing the international date line only served to make the journey longer. It’s an odd feeling to realize that a day seems to have vanished from your life. Not only that, our stop in Brisbane took a couple of hours; all in all, it was over twelve hours en route, which struck me as amazing, considering that we’d already been halfway across the ocean when we started.
By the time we got to our hotel, everyone wore the look of weary travelers. In the lobby, it was possible to sign up for excursions the following day. While everyone would go to Ayers Rock in the afternoon, the morning was open. You could rent Harleys, for instance, and explore parts of the outback on your own, or take a helicopter ride over the Olgas—an outcropping of rock and canyons near Ayers Rock. There was also a walking tour through part of the Olgas as well, and a sunrise trip to Ayers Rock, which would leave the hotel before dawn.
Though my brother and I wanted to sleep, we somehow woke in time to join the sunrise expedition party. It was cool and pitch black in the desert; without lights, it was possible to see tens of thousands—if not millions—of stars. Our bus was one in a long line of buses that made their way out there that morning; we later found out that our hotel was large enough to room over three thousand guests. While this may not mean much in a city like Orlando or Chicago, in the middle of the outback, it’s amazing. At any given moment, we learned, the hotel itself had a higher population than nearly every city for hundreds of miles in any direction.
Ayers Rock is the largest monolith, or single-unit stone, in the world. With a circumference of nearly five miles, it rises nearly a thousand feet in the air, and extends over three miles beneath the surface. In the predawn blackness, Ayers Rock was nothing but a darkened shadow, almost impossible to see unless you were looking directly toward it. Our disheveled group stumbled out of the bus and we made our way to the viewing area.
In time, light began glowing over the horizon, and as it slowly began to spread, our gaze was directed to the rock. Comprised of coarse-grained sandstone rich in feldspar, Ayers Rock was supposed to vary in color depending on the time of day and atmospheric conditions. Still, in the beginning anyway, it was difficult to understand why so many people found it fascinating; it had none of the fiery brilliance for which the rock had become famous. My brother and I took pictures, then more pictures, feeling disappointed. Soon, however, the sun rose high enough to brighten the eastern sky, and just when we came to the conclusion that the reputation of Ayers Rock was more hype than reality, it suddenly happened.
The sun hit the rock at such an angle that it began glowing red, like an enormous glowing coal. And for the next few minutes, all Micah and I could do was stare at it, thinking it was one of the most amazing things we’d ever seen.
Micah and I had opted for the helicopter ride instead of a walking tour through the Olgas, and by eight A.M. we were at the airport again, ready to depart.
There was, we learned, a good reason for taking the ride as early as we did. It was already hot by the time we arrived—it was summer in the desert, after all—and the canopy of the helicopter served only to intensify the heat. With five people crowded inside, everyone was sweating within moments of liftoff.
We were in the air a little more than thirty minutes, but it afforded us views impossible to see any other way. We circled Ayers Rock and flew over the Olgas; we spotted