Elephant Rock

Elephant Rock 

We drove through the desert to get further north and a bush camp. In places, there was some greenery...

...but much of the desert was rolling sand with mountains towering above the plain.

We made a stop at Elephant Rock. It is in an area of sandstone that has been eroded into unusual shapes. There are many outlines of faces, monkeys, teapots and other shapes...but the top visitor attraction is Elephant Rock.

Elephant Rock.

The sunny side of Elephant Rock.

The rock only opens at 4pm. It is a naturl feature but it has been commercialised. There are multiple cafes on site, some with sunken tables and seating in front of the rock.

More cafes and tables.

Queues forming for the (expensive) coffee.

More tables.

There was a sign saying sand drifting is prohibited. This is not a Saudi version of a King Canute moment when he tried to hold back the sea...trying to stop sand blowing across the road...

...sand drifting is driving buggies, quads or bikes up sand dunes...and despite the signs, there were plenty of tyre marks...

...and the noise of a vehicle whinning its way up the dune.

For those that ventured further than 100 metres away from the car park, there were other formations to see...

But when the national past time is sitting around in large groups chatting, this is a popular place. If you like lots of noise, people arguing over car parking spaces because they don't want to walk an extra twenty metres from the overflow car park across soft sand, loud western pop music, over priced coffee, crowds and can't move because of children running around and people taking selfies, then this is the place to be.

We left after na hour but as we were leaving, there were coach loads of tourists turning into the car park, swelling the ranks of visitors. I gave it marks of one out of ten as it did have an interestingly shaped rock...which can only be viewed after 4pm if you visit the cafe area.

We moved on to our bush camp.