We left Stuarts Well early and kept driving south on the Stuart Highway. We had pretty much the road for ourselves, we just passed a few cars and some road trains, those trucks that have 2 to 4 trailers (see picture). Stuart Highway will be considered in Europe not as a highway but as a normal road as it has only one lane. We were surprised to see various landscapes along the way, we though it will be pretty much the same landscape all the time. In fact it changes every 20/30km. Some of the straight lines are very impressive. At Erldunda we turned right onto the Lasseter Highway that takes you to Uluru. Looking on the side of the road to spot some wildlife (kangaroos, camels...) or cattle not fenced, we saw a lot cows packed under the few trees available to get some shadow but we did not see any wildlife. We saw a lot of skeletons of kangaroos and cows along the road that probably were killed by cars and were left on the side of the road. We stopped at Mt Ebenezer petrol station to have a coffee break and soon continued our journey. Mt Ebenezer, like Erldunda, Stuarts Well and Curtin Springs looks like a town on the map but is in fact a petrol station with a restaurant, a few accommodations and a campground (all offer free sites except Erldunda). We stopped at a picnic area where you have a good view on the Mt Conner from the nearby hill. We also stopped at the Mt Conner lookout (the view was better from our previous stop) and climbed the dune to have a look at the dry lake Amadeus located between Uluru and Kings Canyon. We finally arrived at Yulara, the resort at the gate of the 'Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park'. This resort has been well designed as it completely blends with its environment, with only low rise buildings, you won't see it until you are at its gate. At the resort a powered site costs AU$34 but as you cannot camp anywhere else you have no choice! We had lunch and then drove to the National Park. A AU$25 entry free gives you access to the park for 3 days. Initially we wanted to do the walk at Kata Tjuta (=The Olgas) but we found out that in summer this walk is closed from 11am due to extreme temperatures. Instead we went to Uluru. This big rock is really impressive. We did a few pictures, well a lot of pictures, of it from far when the rock looks like a big sand dune, then we drove closer and checked out the view from the dune which is later on reserved for the tours for the sunset viewing. Uluru looks so different from close as you can see all its specific shapes. From the dune you can also see Kata Tjuta. We then drove to the Kuniya car park to do the Base Walk around Uluru. It is better to do this walk in the morning due to the heat but as we would go to Kata Tjuta the next morning we decided to do it. It is really a great walk, 10km, that takes you around Uluru and allows you to appreciate all its different shapes, caves, gorge..... Very impressive! We loved it! We did the walk in only 2h30 as we started it at 4pm and wanted to finish it on time to watch the sunset. It would have been better if we could have taken an extra hour to have more time to appreciate all the beautiful points of view Uluru has to offer. This walk is easy as flat, however we found it hard as we did it under more than 40C! The only good point of braving the heat is that we had the track for ourselves, we only met 3 people. We then drove to the sunset viewing car park, we arrived at 7pm and stayed a good hour to watch Uluru change colours as the sun goes down. During the day Uluru is of a pale orange and as soon as the sun starts going down it turns into a very red colour that ends up being brown just before the sun disappears. We returned by night to the campground with our head full of beautiful images of Uluru but very tired after this long day.
