awesome sites and lots of nothing
So this was a 7 day tour which covered the same amount of distance as driving from New York to Miami and back again in the US (only without the traffic). The road we drove on was the MAJOR Highway for the state and all it was was a one lane road in each direction going straight up. No hills, no trees, no nothing except the bush and the occasional kangeroo or emu walking around. We had to stop at every gas station we came too because they are so far apart that you couldn't get to the next one on one tank of gas.We stopped in a different town every night on the tour starting with the first night just outside of Geraldton at a bed and breakfast place on the beach. The first day was pretty much all driving just to get up near Kalbarri and such. The second day we went to Kalbarri National Park where we saw Eagle Gorge on the coast...spent a little time in Kalbarri while our tour guide Rory went to get the tire on our trailor fixed (yea we broke down twice on the trip with flat tires on the trailor, fun times let me tell ya). Then we headed deeper into the park where we saw Nature's Window and "the loop" which is a huge gorge with a "river" running through it creating the shape of a loop (I say "river" cause their wasn't actually any ater in it when we were there)...that night we stayed at the Monkey Mia Dolphin backpacker resort.
The next morning we got up early to go out and watch the dolphin feeding along the shore outside of our resort and then took an hour long catameran tour out along the bay were we saw more dolphins. We then drove for a little while to Shell Beach for lunch. Shell beach is exactly what the name says it is... a beach of ALL shells. For as far as you can see it's all shells...absolutly gorgeous. We then drove for a long while to get to our overnight at Coral Bay...a old rundown farm area that looked like it was something out of Psycho...but it worked for one night. The next morning we drove up to the main Coral Bay area where we got the chance to go on a glass-bottomed boat and snorkel over the Ningaloo Reef. Despite the FREEZING cold water that was definitly one of the best parts of the trip because where else can you snorkel over a 240km reef? We had lunch at Coral Bay before taking off up the coast to our last major stop in Exmouth. When we got to Exmouth we were told to quickly drop off our stuff in our trailors (yes we stayed in trailors for two nights in Exmouth) so that they could take us for our sunset suprise. The tour guides drove us out to the lighthouse in Exmouth and gave us all a glass of champagne to drink as we watched the sunset over the Indian Ocean. Can you beat that? I don't think so.... We came back for a mexican dinner that night (tacos on the barbie).
The 5th day we got up relatively early to head out to Turquoise Bay. Now if you haven't figured it out by now, Australians are real original with the naming of places.....(SHELL beach and the LOOP) so when they say TURQUOISE bay they mean that the water is...you guessed it turquoise. And since we were still behind the Ningaloo Reef there weren't any waves except those crashin over the reef in the distance. We got to spend the whole day reading and laying in the sun along the shore of the bay. We had lunch there and stayed until about 3 in the afternoon before going back for dinner at the camp. Rory collected some money from all of us (except Lara because of her problem with eating things that swim in the sea) and went to buy some fresh fish for us for dinner that night. We had calamari, prawns and red backed emperor....all (except for the calamari) had been caught earlier that day. Probably the best fish I've ever had...even though I really didn't care for the calamari. The next morning it was time to make the first half of the long haul back down the coast to Perth so we left early and ended up REALLY late. We didn't get in to our overnight until around 9 and had dinner around 9:30.
The next morning was our final day on the tour and we left early to get to Jurien Bay for lunch before going to see the Pinnacles. the Pinnacles are rock formations that kind of stick up from the ground all over the place...kinda hard to describe (check my pictures when i get them up to see what I mean)...and then wee made the final drive home to get back here by around 7pm.
Overall I really enjoyed the trip, it was a ridiculous amount of driving and a huge amount of nothing all the time. The road is just straight up with hardly a turn or hill. Their were a few hard times with the accomadation and the alte night driving and even later dinners but the tour guides tried their best and all in all got us to see everything we wanted to see.
The last day of our tour we all got some scary news coming out of Bali with the three suicide bombings happening their. Luckily (as far as I know) no one that we knew was affected by the bombing but obviously hundreds were. We all were feeling very lucky to have gone to that wonderful island when we did becuase we could have just as easily chosen to go this week and we all would have been there when the bombs went off. The scariest part was that they were so close to where we were, the two in the restaurant in Kuta was right down the street from our hotel and the on at the bay was just down from the restaurant that we all ate at on our last night in Bali. I only hope that people continue to visit that wonderful place and keep those people going because without tourists they really have nothing.......
On a lighter note...now that I'm back I have to get the rest of my work and papers done for the semester in the next 4-5 weeks before I'll be flying over to Sydney and Melbourne for 4-5 nights in each city.
Stay tuned!
posted by Will181198 @ 9:32 PM
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