Uluru aka Ayers Rock

Okay, this post is just going to be a rant, so if you don't want negativity (and a little profanity), don't read any further.  It is my opinion that this place is called Uluru because if it was called Screw U (which is what they do to all the tourists), nobody would come.  I have been here about 24 hours and don't have much good to say about this place, the Desert Gardens Hotel.  There are 3 hotels and a campground that all seem to operate under the umbrella of Ayers Rock Resort.  If it's not all owned by the same people, then the owners are colluding to overprice everything; there doesn't appear to be any competition that would contain prices.

Let me start by saying that I was ambivalent about coming here.  Truthfully I didn’t have a lot of interest, but thought that Ayers Rock is so iconic to Australia that if I skipped it I would be missing out on a big part of the experience and would regret it later.  The hotel prices are exorbitant, but I knew that going in.

I waited about 2 1/2 hours yesterday for a room to be ready.  In fairness, I had an early arrival, but I was feeling poorly and just wanted to lie down, so the wait put me in a bad mood.  Feeling a bit better today, I decided to go to a couple of the lookout points nearby and get a few pics of the big rock.  Okay, so far so good.  Then I decided to take a walk to the campground and look around, to see what the Aussies do differently than we do when camping.  Check, done.  Since it was a fairly long walk already, I decided to sit down and wait for the shuttle bus that's supposed to run every 20 minutes.  I went to the bus stop on my map and waited patiently for about 15 minutes for the bus.  Finally, I see it coming and the son-of-a-bitch drives right past me!  What?  Am I f**king invisible?!?  So I had about a 15 minute walk to cool down on the way back to my hotel where I go to the desk to complain and the asshole at the desk tells me that the bus only stops at the stop IN the campground, not in front of it.  In other words they gave me a bogus map, and in essence said, "Tough shit, tourist.  We've got your money and what are you going to do about it?"  So my reply is that I plan to flood the internet with as much negative info about this place as I can.

To any other tourists, especially Americans, go to Utah and see much more spectacular rock formations!    Don’t get me wrong, it’s a big rock, but other than that I am not impressed.  This room, although nice, is not worth over $250 a night (in US dollars)!  And the service people don’t seem particularly interested in making me a happy tourist.  And every excursion is ridiculously overpriced.

When I travel, I really really really try to not be the ugly American.  I try to go with the flow and not be thinking or saying, “That’s not how we do it at home.” That said, I think I am justified in my complaints about this place and I would not recommend it to anyone.  There, got that off my chest.  Hopefully tomorrow will be better.