The best way to describe Uluru is that it is a huge orange rock in the middle of nowhere. Over tens of thousands of years, it has gone from being a sacred site of the local aboriginals to a tourist attraction. Today it is managed by both the national park service and the aboriginals.

We took a bus from Alice Springs to Uluru, a nontrivial 270 mile drive. We made several stops along the way, including at a camel farm, a roadside cafe and a scenic overlook. We arrived 4 1/2 hours later at the Ayers Rock Resort (Ayers Rock was what the first non-aboriginal explorers named the rock).

The resort consists of six hotels, a town center with shops, a post office, and a grocery store. We arrived in the evening. It rained briefly, and we saw a rainbow, which is a rather rare occurence in an area that gets about four inches of rain a year. Dinner featured the best money-making restaurant ever - AUS$17 for a hamburger and AUS$22 for a small steak, but you cook your own food over a grill. We tried to get our money's worth at the all-you-can-eat salad bar. Stuffed ourselves with salad, corn, bread, and mashed potatoes while chatting it up with a lovely couple - she, an animal nutritionist, and he, a grape harvestor at one of Adelaide's many vineyards.

The ridiculous thing about being at this resort in the middle of nowhere was the prices. Since they were the only game in town (and knew it) buffets meals were AUS$50-60 each. Tourists unfortunate enough to not have a car (read: us) end up paying ridiculous amounts of money for buses out to the rock and another geological formation nearby, Kata Tjuta (also known as the Olgas) - we're talking AUS$60 for a ride out and back, AUS$100 for a guided tour with an "expert," and another AUS$25 each for a park pass to enter. It was completely outrageous. If you ever visit this area, rent a car to drive there, if at all possible.

Our travel package included a sunrise tour of Uluru. A bus picked us up from our hotel at 5:40 am and took us to a sunrise viewing point. Over the next forty-five minutes we watched in awe as the rock subtly changed colors, finally ending up a brilliant orange. We were expecting the sunlight to start at the top of the rock and slowly creep down, but the flatness and bushiness of the surrounding country causes the subtle changes in color.

Uluru is an awesome sight to behold. It juts out of the ground with a mind- boggling immensity, highlighted by its brilliant orange-red color. Wing wore his Grumpus shirt to match. After millions of years of erosion, the rock has become quite smooth. Water has carved a few paths down its face, and there are dry watering holes around the base. The area is rich with aboriginal culture - there are paintings in the caves, some depicting the rock's creation, a story of snakes and warriors. Sacred sites, used for rites of passage, recovery from sickness, and childbirth have "no photo" signs around them. There is a trail to the top of the rock, but it is also considered sacred. Tourists are not explicitly banned from the trail, but we (or actually Wing, who resisted Jen's pleas) chose not to ascend out of respect for their wishes.

Not nearly as awe-inspiring as the rock itself is the incredible number of flies in the area. The flies loved us. We wore hats and invested in flynets to keep them off our faces, but they covered just about everything else. It seemed like other visitors didn't have as many flies around them, so Wing formulated a theory about why there were so many around us. Australian outback flies are extremely persistent, so even if you wave them off, they come right back to you. This means that the number of flies surrounding you is monotonically increasing, which, in turn, means that the longer you stay outside, the more flies you will have surrounding you. We spent a long while outside, walking on our own from the aboriginal culture center back to the rock (about 1.2 miles, then walking around the rock for another 30-40 minutes) and then stopping every few feet to take photos of the swarms that had settled onto our clothes. Most tourists don't spend that long outside of their air- conditioned buses, so we probably picked up more flies than the average tourist.

The culture center, by the way, was well worth visiting. The most interesting information was about how the aboriginals use native plants and animals to help them survive. They know where to find food and water. Apparently they found that a certain type of eucalyptus excretes a chemical that can be used as sunblock, and that other plants have medical uses as well.

When it was time to go, we eagerly climbed back onto our bus, enjoying the view of the rock from its air-conditioned, fly-free interior.

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Ok, given that we were in the middle of nowhere, that we had nearly an entire day left, that we were probably never going to come back again (even though we were happy to see it once), that we did not feel like spending another AUS$100 to see more orange rocks while being bothered by flies, that we had skipped having a nice dinner our last night in Sydney, and that this particular activity had been highly recommended by several people, we decided to try the "Sounds of Silence" dinner. For the low, low price of AUS$140 (each), you are treated to a buffet dinner in the outback. It's pretty hard to rationalize a AUS$140 meal, but somehow we managed to do it (hey, it was our honeymoon).

A bus picked us up to take us to the dining location, an outlook with views of both Uluru and Kata Tjuta. We were treated to champagne and delicious hors d'oeuvres. A musician played digeridoo as the sunset and diners snapped pictures and mingled. We made our way down a gently sloping hill to candle- lit dinner tables. We sat at a table of eight with an Australian/English couple and four tourists from England. Despite being worried that we wouldn't fit in with the high-class (and elderly) tourist crowd, the company was delightful. The couple was extremely sweet, and three of the English tourists were easy-going, fun- loving, mischeivous. The last was a financial analyst who received a good-natured ribbing from the others, for having a stuffy job.

The food was definitely catered towards tourists - aside from the fish, chicken, and beef, there was crocodile salad, kangaroo, and emu sausage. When Wing went back for seconds, the cook had moved some of the serving platters around, so he couldn't tell what was beef and what was kangaroo. Wing asked for one piece of kangaroo and ended up getting two of something and three of another. He didn't quite finish all of that meat. The food was decent, but at least there was a lot of it. Jen had a headache from her glass of champagne, but recovered in time to make a strong showing at dessert. We rounded out the meal with bread pudding, pear cake, and some sort of apple dessert.

The highlight of the evening was a star-gazing session. We had never seen such a clear night sky. The band of the Milky Way was clearly visible. The guide used a huge torch to point out constellations. We learned how to find the south celestial pole using the Southern Cross (a constellation visible only from the Southern Hemisphere) and nearby stars. Afterwards she set up telescopes to view the "nearby" triple star system containing Alpha Centauri and Jupiter (along with the four large Galilean satellites, all clearly visible).

Finally our evening came to an end. For the last few nights of our trip (in Cairns), we searched the night sky until we could pick out the south celestial pole. It was a beautiful, very pleasant evening.

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The general consensus among visitors to Uluru is that seeing the rock is a once in a lifetime sort of thing. We wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment.