Another Road Trip?! You know it!

I know I’m posting rapid fire today but I figured it was better than doing just one and having it be the longest post ever.  I had two full days on the train with no reading material so I had plenty of time on my hands to regale you with tales from our most recent travels.  Alex got a new IT book that he can’t stop reading (I’m proud of him for doing something constructive while we’re here, but seriously, I don’t think I could handle hearing one more ‘interesting’ fact about subnetworking) and there’s only so many hands of cards we can play (esp. since Alex is an ungracious winner, to put it nicely, and lately it seems like he always wins) so I was able to get caught up on everything.

After Perth, we still had ten days to kill before Mr. & Mrs. Styche arrived for their visit so, rather than go back east, we decided to rent a campervan and head up the west coast.  It was a spur of the moment decision we made after hearing yet another rave review about Ningaloo Marine Park.  We knew we probably wouldn’t make it back over to Western Australia so we figured we’d better check it out while we were here.

Our campervan rental was actually a campervan this time and it was quite spacious.  It was a little bit harder to drive (and, shockingly, Alex actually let me drive a bit this trip) but at night it was great not to be smushed into the back of a cramped truck.  Here’s Alex, caught snacking before dinner, in our accommodations for the week.

 

We’d read several west coast itineraries so we had a fairly good idea of everything we wanted to see on our road trip.  Our first stop was Kalbarri National Park, where we planned to check out a rock formation they call ‘nature’s window’ but first we made our way along the coastal cliffs, which were quite scenic.

The flies were insane, there were so many and they all seemed to hover around our face, so we made a hasty stop along the coast before cruising through town on our way to the national park.  Nothing we’d read mentioned anything about the actual town so we were surprised at how idyllic it was.  This is the view across from main street in downtown. 

When we got out to the national park we were surprised to learn that the road to everything we’d come to see was an unpaved dirt track, not unlike the one we barely survived on our way to Kings Canyon.  Now I promised you last time we took a road trip that we weren’t going off roading anymore and you’ll be proud to know that we did not.  Seriously, we took our 100+ km detour in stride and kept on driving!

Shell Beach was next up, though it was quite a bit farther north so we didn’t make it there until the following afternoon.  It looks like just another gorgeous Australian beach but the entire beach is made up of small shells not sand.  It was very cool (though not so nice to walk on).

 

From there we continued on to Monkey Mia in Shark Bay.  Shark Bay and Monkey Mia are deceptively named since we didn’t see sharks or monkeys and the place is home to a dolphin resort.  And it was awesome!  We got there just before sunset and ran down to the beach with a bottle of wine to unwind from our two non-stop days of driving (well, riding mostly for me but you know what I mean). 

While we were sitting off, I spotted these wild dolphins swimming around the harbor just off the beach.

The next morning we got up to experience the dolphins first hand.  Every day, the resort (I say resort but it was more like a campground with a pool and a few cabins) has several wild dolphin feedings and you can go into the water and they swim right up to you (though, like a strip club, no touching is allowed). 

They know all the dolphins by the marks on their fins and they feed them each a specifically limited amount of fish to ensure they still hunt naturally. 

 

 

The dolphins seem to be as keen on this ritual as all the people who flock to the beach everyday to participate.

After enjoying our time with the dolphins, we got back in the car and continued on to Coral Bay, in the Ningaloo Marine Park.  We drove north for a few hours before turning off and spending another hour on a narrow paved road, in what looked like the middle of the desert, then we went over a hill and boom, there it was.  The town was small, consisting of only a beach, two campgrounds, one small resort and an even smaller shopping center; it was immediately clear what the main attraction was.  Our campground was right across the road from the beach so, excited to finally have reached our destination, we went there straightaway and were amazed by how clear the water was.

What makes Ningaloo so special is that you can just walk into the water from the beach with a mask and snorkel and see gorgeous fields of coral.  The color was more muted than the Great Barrier Reef but the coral was much, much larger and more intact.  The water was cold and we got there too late to rent equipment so we decided to go on a kayak/snorkel tour out to the edge of the coral reef the next morning.

Our guide, Corey, was cool and he led us, along with two other couples, on our outing. 

Visibility was 40 meters so it was like being in a giant fish bowl and we saw colorful fish, a reef shark and a cute turtle.  (These are stock photos of Ningaloo from the disc we bought, but they capture what it looked like and what we saw.  Did you notice the shark in the first photo?  Once I figure out how to turn GoPro video into a still photo - which our guide assured me was possible - I'll put up a few more photos from our snorkel).

My favorite part was just the vastness of the coral.  In the GBR, you have bommies of coral sprouting out of the sand that you can swim around and, in some places there are a bunch of them together, but here the ocean floor was just covered in coral, everywhere you looked, for a depth of three to five meters in some places.  The stag horn coral was massive compared to anything we’d seen on the east coast and they had these big pieces of coral that looked like lettuce that grew to more than six feet in diameter.

After our tour, we had a quick lunch then jumped back in the water to see more coral.  We were like little kids swimming around pointing things out to each other excitedly.  I saw a black tip reef shark but it swam off into the distance before I could swim over to Alex to get his attention.  We’d been out there nearly an hour, drifting with the current back to the beach, when Alex pointed out that we had one zebra fish that had been following us the whole time.  I’m not sure what the little guy expected from us but he tailed us the entire way to the other end of the beach until we got out of the water.

The next morning we went out one last time before we had to get in the campervan for the drive back to Perth.  We stayed out there until we were shivering and I couldn’t take it anymore; both of us sad to have to leave such a wonderous place. 

On our way back we passed over this massive, dry riverbed.  It was totally dry on our way up so it must have rained a bit while we were in Coral Bay.  (I will add that this is what most riverbeds looked like in the Northern Territory and Western Australia.)

 

I’ve mentioned road trains in the past and WA was no exception.  Except this time we passed the biggest road train we’d ever seen, it took up both lanes and had its own police escort!

Another sight I am excited to share with you is the famous horizontal trees in Greenlough.   The constant strong southerly winds ‘burn off’ the growth on one side and the weak trunk is unable to support the tree so they tip over and then continue growing sideways.  All the trees in the area had a distinct lean, though only the gum trees appeared to actually tip over and grow horizontally. 

Our trip was wearing on at this point and Alex had had enough (maybe if he’d have shared the driving more evenly – I drove 2 km, literally just 2 km, that day – he wouldn’t have been so cranky).  As you can see here, by this point he was less than impressed with me asking him to stop so I could take photos.

After stopping at our favorite local wineries along the way to pick up a few bottles, we spent our last night in the campervan in Swan Valley.  It was a good end to another good trip and we made it back to Perth safely the following afternoon.  We then had the evening to relax before we got on the train the next morning for our last train trip, the fun two-day ride back to Adelaide.  This train ride was more sociable with lots of fun people to chat with as we rode along and the time went by quickly with Alex studying and me catching up on posts. 

We’re now back in Adelaide for three nights before flying to Melbourne on Monday to meet the Styches at the airport.  Mrs. Styche has a rigorous itinerary planned for the next three weeks (with stops in Melbourne, Kangaroo Island, Adelaide, Barossa Valley, Clare Valley, Frazer Island, Brisbane, Surfers Paradise and Sydney) so I am not sure when I’ll be able to update you guys on all the fun we’re having but I’m going to try not to get so far behind again.