Visitors to Kata Tjuta National Park seek out the rare bit of shade in the park. See map of author's journey
ALICE SPRINGS, Australia - They came at me relentlessly, buzzing past my ears like tiny propeller planes that would eventually land on my forehead and taxi across the tarmac of my face. They crawled into my ears, eyes, tried to gain access to both nostrils.
Flies! No visitor to the Australian outback can escape them.
During a three-day excursion earlier this year to Kata Tjuta National Park, I was attacked, in 110-degree heat, by hordes of flies. But it was Madonna who ultimately made me lose my cool.
We departed Alice Springs at daybreak. In addition to David, our tour guide from Way Out Back Desert Safaris, there were eight in our group: a newlywed Spanish couple; a pot-bellied 60-year-old Swiss businessman traveling with his adult son; two Germans, brother and sister; a Canadian who operates a Zamboni at a hockey rink in Alberta; and me, an American in the midst of an around-the-world trip.
We piled into a modified Toyota Land Cruiser, introduced ourselves, and settled into the air-conditioned vehicle for an outback adventure.
During the four-hour highway jaunt to our desert campsite, I would have been happy to stare at the arid landscape or converse with the others, all of whom seemed to lead interesting lives. But David insisted on playing music constantly, and at high volume.
He bombarded us with a cacophony of forgotten tunes by the likes of Meatloaf and Pat Benatar. After an hour or so, the Zamboni driver finally objected, but he had to scream louder than the music so that David could hear.
Unfortunately, this only set off a chain reaction of complaints. The result was that for the next three hours, we had to listen over and over to Madonna's Greatest Hits.
We arrived at the campsite, ears ringing from Material Girl monotony, and were immediately set upon by flies. They hovered around our heads as we off-loaded provisions to a makeshift kitchen. More flies swarmed the picnic table as we laid out bread, ham, cheese, lettuce and sliced tomatoes with which to make sandwiches.
We swatted at our outback smorgasbord, in vain.
We endured these annoyances in order to see a big rock. Uluru - also known as Ayers Rock, is a 1,100-feet-tall sandstone monolith with a circumference of more than 6 miles. It sits atop the flat desert plain of Kata Tjuta National Park, which the Australian government leased for 99 years after returning the sacred land to Aborigines in 1985.
Our plan was to tread a section of the surrounding walking track and then retreat to a viewing area. From there we would watch Uluru change colors in the fading sunlight.
Beneath a white-hot sun we walked for nearly an hour, swiping at flies all the way.
I marveled at the aboriginal wall paintings that grace Uluru's caves. But soon I could think of nothing but the insufferable heat. It was like walking through the world's largest convection oven. With each labored breath I felt as if my lungs might ignite.
We finally reached the parking lot and escaped into the Land Cruiser, only to have its air conditioner give out.
We rode in sweaty misery to the viewing area and watched the tourism nightmare begin. Huge buses roared into the parking lot and from them spilled perhaps 1,500 oglers who, like us, had come to watch the sunset play upon Uluru's northwestern face.
Tuxedoed waiters appeared among some of these tourists, pouring champagne into their glass flutes as they sat on folding chairs. Other visitors swarmed behind the ropes of the viewing area, pointing their cameras like weapons.
As the sun began to set, a thousand or so camera shutters began clicking. Beneath a rich blue sky, Uluru was bathed in amber, orange, reddish brown, burgundy. The rock then faded in twilight.
At our campsite the next morning, I was awakened abruptly. Not by sunlight or hunger, but by more flies. I leapt from my sleeping bag, swatting frantically at a squadron of the critters.
We packed our gear and jumped into the Land Cruiser, with at least a dozen flies trapped inside it. But because the windows had been permanently sealed to prevent outback dust from entering the vehicle, we were forced to ride in fly-ridden agony.
The next two days were as exhilarating as they were difficult to endure. We hiked through Kata Tjuta (aboriginal for "place of many heads"), a group of monolithic rocks west of Uluru. We camped in the open spaces of Kings Creek Cattle Station, where a doorless "bush toilet" allowed me to answer nature's call and watch the sunset simultaneously.
And on Day Three, after a sweltering hike through Kings Canyon, we returned to the Land Cruiser to find Madonna screaming Like a Virgin again.
"Please, please, please turn that *!@# OFF!" I said to David.
Madonna finally fell silent. But within the superheated confines of the vehicle, which had begun to stink of sweat and the smell from sore, shoeless feet, the flies buzzed with glee.
- Next stop: Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei.
Elliott Hester, author of Plane Insanity: A Flight Attendant's Tales of Sex, Rage and Queasiness at 30,000 Feet, is traveling around the world for a year. His dispatches appear regularly in Travel. Contact Elliott at megoglobal@hotmail.com or visit www.elliotthester.com
