Uluru, November 4: Sunset dinner

I have no notes about our sunset dinner, so I will recreate them from memory. 

The tour company picked us up in time for sunset. First they checked our national park passes. I call these the tourist tax. In order to visit Uluru, you have to purchase a 3-day pass for $38AUD, or $50AUD for an annual pass. There are no options. Then they drove us out to a vantage point where we could watch the sunset over Kata Tjuta but reflecting on Uluru. As we waited, they plied us with champagne and bits (appetizers). Don opted for water.

This is why you check when strangers
take your picture

We could see the lightning off in the distance. A random stranger visiting from England captured this picture by filming the storm and grabbing a screen shot:

Then we boarded the bus to our dinner location. As you can see in the pictures, the clouds rolled in and blocked our view of the stars.

Dinner was an enormous buffet with lots of food, both in quantity and variety. We had chicken skewers, steaks, veggies, coleslaw, and kangaroo. There were other options, but these are the ones I remember.

Our dinner companions were a couple from Finland a little older than us, three 30-something friends from Sydney, and an aunt from Toronto visiting her niece and nephew who live in Adelaide (the niece is a nurse). Dinner conversations flowed effortlessly over wine and beer. The astronomy talk was pointless due to the solid cloud coverage, but our leader pressed on with his green laser pointer that could have reached the moon had the moon not been hidden by clouds. Also at our dinner was a Japanese film crew. In exchange for agreeing to be filmed, the nephew from Adelaide asked him to take a picture of our table. Through the magic of technology, he shared the picture with all of us.

We heard an interesting statistic that when the International Space Station is flying overhead it is closer than the nearest McDonalds in Alice Springs. Yes, they are that far away from anyone.

Other than the clouds, all was right with the world on that Monday night.

And then...

Don decides to use the drop toilet one last time before the 15 minute ride back to the hotel. He notices the group boarding the bus. Sees the illuminated path to the bus. In the pitch darkness, he does not see the solid bench made from driftwood between the bathroom and the bus and slams his right leg into it exactly where his cell phone is resting in his pocket.

It is the type of pain you know will hurt later.

He valiantly walks back to our room and collapses. On the bathroom floor.

The nurse from dinner recommended ice, so I got ice from the front desk.

This is the moment the wheels fell off our charmed vacation.