Ayers Rock and other sacred sites - to climb or not to climb?

Australia
March 25, 2007 8:59pm CST
when i visited Ayers Rock/Uluru, i was undecided about whether i should climb it. i travelled in a tour group, and before visiting the rock, we had a good look around the information centre where i found out that the Aboriginal tribe from the area asks visitors not to climb the rock out of respect to their traditions, as it is a sacred site to them. a place where young men would go to climb, and if they did not fall off they were considered men when they returned to the ground. so, while tourists are given the choice to climb or not, after reading this, i chose not to climb the rock, out of respect to the Aboriginal people. i then found out later that our tour guide had had the opportunity to climb the rock around 30 times, yet he had made the same choice as me. but every other person on my tour group decided to make the climb (it takes roughly 1.5 hrs to climb, and 2.5 hrs to walk around the perimeter). so, what would you do? would you choose to climb the rock? have you been in a similar situation with sacred sites in your country or other places that you've visited?
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1 response
@Sasselle (698)
• Australia
27 Mar 07
I'm not sure if i would or not ... i guess it would depend on if I went their solely to climb or not. I know Aboriginals have their traditions but it seems that there is nothing in Australia that they haven't claimed as "sacred" but I know at one stage people were paying to climb Ayers Rock and all the money was going to an Aboriginal community.