It all started with a sunrise in Perth.
Our group consisted of three English people, a Texan, two Germans, and me. The tour leader looked like a truckie lesbian by first impression (I hope no-one who doesn't already know how rude I am reads this blog), but later I found out that she had shaved her head to raise money and support for her flatmate who had been diagnosed with cancer. How sweet is that!
Easyrider turned out to be a no-rules-just-get-drunk type of tour, which I wasn't too happy about. I found it hard to understand how these people had the energy and wish to drink the whole day and night every single day! I ended up drinking goon (boxed wine of the cheapest and lowest quality) with them every other day as well, just because I couldn't face being sober anymore with all the drunk people around. (Drunk people seem to want everybody else to share their condition so there was no end to their insisting that you should drink as well.) Apart from the drinking, I enjoyed their company (except for Mr. Annoying Guy, who I'm going to complain about in my next entry) and grew fond of them in the end.
Our first stop was the Pinnacles desert in Nambung national park. Pinnacles are limestone pillars left over when erosion and the ocean washed away most of the other soil, a long time ago of course. The landscape looks otherworldly with the forest of fallos symbols sticking out of the sand floor. The place doesn't look like it should exist on Earth.
Our destination for the next two days was Kalbarri, as small fishing village of about 4000 people. In the evenings there isn't much else to do than retiring to the village pub to play pool or sing karaoke. (According to my observation, the Western Australians seem to be the biggest drinkers in Australia... And the smaller your town, the more you drink, as there's nothing else to do.) Other option was drinking on the beach, where we helped some local guys to lay their new pre-grown lawn, in exchange for a box of bier.
In the morning of our second day we were off to Kalbarri national park to do some canoeing on the river. It was awesome! I canoed with a German girl. Although we did a lot of zigzaging in the beginning, I quickly learnt to steer the boat and we ended up being the fastest team. The first hour it was warm and sunny, and it was a pleasure to glide along the river appreciating the scenery. Then the weather changed abruptly, it started pouring with rain and the river began to flow the wrong way (away from the ocean) because of the blowing wind, which made it a real struggle to get forward. When we arrived to our first stop (and the only one, as nobody wanted to continue paddling - the kayaking company guy said that these were the toughest conditions they'd ever experienced there) we all were soaked and exhausted. Dressed in garbage bags for some extra warmth, we attacked the warm brunch that was waiting for us. The fried eggs, bacon and toast were maybe the most welcome meal I've ever had, and tasted heavenly!
Initially, I had wanted to hop off the bus in Kalbarri and stay too extra nights, before catching the next Easyrider bus to continue the tour. However, I heard now that the next bus had been cancelled, so I would either have to stay a whole week to wait for the next one, or continue with the current group. I figured that I would probably get bored if I stayed in town much longer (at least after a cool Swedish guy I met would leave), so actually it was a good thing that I had to change my plans. I believed it would be better to be stuck in Coral Bay in the end of the tour than where I was. So, the following morning I got on the bus with the others and off we went.
On that third morning we visited another part of the Kalbarri national park. We did some walks in the gorgeous gorges and took some funny cliff hanging pictures.
We really got to hang from the cliffs too, as we tried some abseiling, Abseiling is the opposite of rock climbing: you lower yourself down a cliff wall hanging from a rope. At first it felt unnatural to step off from the edge of the cliff, but once I got the hang of it, it was great fun bouncing down the wall. I'd love to do more of that some time!
We continued on to our next destination, Shark Bay the national park and World Heritage Area. To protect the environment from non-native animals, mostly wild cats, a fence has been put up across the whole peninsula. There is only one gate in it for cars to go through. And what prevents the cats to walk through the gate, you may ask. Loudspeakers! They have installed motion detectors that are connected to a set of loudspeakers. Whenever something moves near the gate, the speakers emits the sound of dogs barking. Apparently this method works to keep the cats away. Ingenious!
We spent our first day touring the national park. The coastline was stunning, with the turquoise ocean, white beach and orange desert sand making an intriguing contrast.
Shark Bay has got its name from the large number of sharks that inhabit the area. We didn't go to the water to greet them - it was so windy and chilly that no-one was attracted to the idea of being dragged behind a boat in a boom net. However, we visited an oceanarium, where we got to see lots of local fish captured from the area. The highlight was definitely when our tour guide fed fish to the big sharks. I was standing next to him, so I could see the sharks' teeth and strength from only a meter away. It was quite scary. One girl was clever enough to drop her wallet in the tanks, and our tour guide had to fish it out.
On our way back we stopped at a hot spring. It looked like a common hot tub, but actually the water rose up from somewhere deep down the ground. At 40 degrees warm it was lovely to soak in, just what we needed after a long, windy day.
We stayed two nights in the little village of Denham. Again there wasn't much to do at night except for partying. I was tired and too stubborn to give in to social pressure, so I skipped the hot tub party and went to bed early. Apparently I missed on something as the party turned out to be quite eventful. It was organized by a local guy who was in the Australian 'Farmer Wants a Wife" TV show ('Maajussille morsian' in Finland) and works in the oceanarium. He has brought one of the fish tanks home and uses it as a hot tub! I hear people were jumping off the roof to the pool, and one guy got his pants ripped to pieces when playing with a Bob-Cat, and thus had to come back wearing a skirt. Sounds legendary, too bad that I wasn't in the mood!
Next morning we got up early to visit a resort called Monkey Mia, where wild dolphins show up for feeding punctually at 7:30 every morning. I've seen dolphins many times before in captivity, but it was still nice to see wild ones up close.
After the dolphins it was time to continue the ride north. During the long drive we were once again entertained by boxes of goon. Maybe that's why one of the girls forgot her purse at a toilet stop, and we had to turn around at the Tropic of Capricorn to do an extra 100 km return loop to fetch it. (And why I got "tired" early and didn't see the eclipse that occurred that night! Bugger!) Still, we managed to reach our destination, Coral Bay, just in time to witness a stunning sunset.
Describing Coral Bay even as a tiny village would be exaggerating, as there is almost nothing there. I have no idea where the 190 permanent residents live, as I saw no buildings apart from the two hotels, caravan parks and a handful of shops. There was no cell phone reception for any other operators than Telstra. (As I didn't feel like going online either, it meant I spent a week without any contact to other parts of the world, apart from watching the England-Germany game - I don't know if I've ever been isolated like that before!) Even the water supply was very basic: the hostel had drinking water taps only in the kitchen, so you showered and brushed your teeth with slightly salty water. Despite all this, I liked Coral Bay enormously. I felt sad to leave after five nights, which is a sure sign that I've really liked some place. I think I'll have to place CB in my TOP 3 list of favourite places in Australia. The details of why I liked it so much will be recounted in my next entry.
The morning of our sixth day together (and for me the last day of the tour - apart from me and a German girl D, the other would continue to Karijini national park the next day, before returning to Coral Bay after two nights) I was surprised to wake up with no sign of hangover. That was good as we were due to go for an ocean kayaking trip. We dressed in wetsuits and hopped on yellow plastic thingies, two in each of them, and started paddling out to the reef. The wind was quite strong, but even though it made moving forward hard work, me and my former canoeing partner K had a benefit on our side: the tour guide was quite sexist and thus of the opinion that girls cannot possibly have the muscle power nor the skill to handle a kayak, so as we were the only kayaking team without a male, he had bound our kayak with a rope behind his. This made him have to drag us whenever we slowed down too much. Actually we did pretty well and were faster than the two kayaks with the boys, but still we were grateful to get the support as it enabled us to save our energy for later.
We paddled for about half an hour, during which time Mr. Annoying (who had boasted to be really good at kayaking as he had been in his school's kayaking team) managed to turn his kayak upside down, and make himself, his partner and all their gear to fall off, so that the guide had to dive down to fetch their snorkelling masks. (Mr. Annoying was already bragging about his in reality non-existent skills in Kalbarri, where he totally sucked at steering his canoe and made the girls do all the work.)
Nevertheless, we managed to reach our mooring spot out at the reef, hooked up our kayaks, donned the snorkelling gear on and hopped to the water, straight into a big school of fish!
It took Mr. Annoying ten minutes to wander away from the group and get lost, so that he had to be rescued. The incident didn't surprise any of us anymore, but with this and the falling out of the kayak before, the guide wasn't too impressed with him.
During our snorkel, we saw heaps of fish and coral. However, the main attraction was the "shark cleaning station" - a piece of coral that reef sharks like to come to have their teeth cleaned by little fish. I would never have dared to go there alone, but since the guide was still in one piece and seemed to know what he was doing, I actually felt pretty safe. We saw four sharks, one of them quite small and the largest one much bigger than me. They were apparently harmless black and white tip reef sharks. In the midst of admiring the sharks, I passed my camera to the Texan so he could duck dive down and take a closer picture of the sharks. Just then two of the sharks came out from under a rock, something happened, and when the guy surfaced again he didn't have my camera. F**K!!! Luckily, the guide spotted the camera floating (it's buoyant because there's air trapped inside the waterproof pouch) ten meters from us, so we could fetch it back. Phew, no harm done (except for me not being able to take pictures of the sharks - however, the guide took some so I can share those).
With the end of the kayaking trip my tour was officially over. Our last night together I was feeling homesick and not interested in the company of my group. Luckily, I found a nice Danish girl to have a good bitching & moaning session with. The others were going to leave first thing in the morning, and I would be pretty much on my own again for the next three days as D would move to another room (she got upgraded after taking up cleaning duty to pay for her stay). Or so I thought - I was in for a surprise in the following morning.
Ei kommentteja:
Lähetä kommentti