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Published: October 22nd 2009
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Bus
Our brief stop in Carnarvon. Must have been a nice town considering the amount of travelers that got on at this stop at 3am. September 25th: After a very long overnight bus ride (actually, three bus rides because of transfers), we finally arrived in Monkey Mia around 7:45am. Monkey Mia is located on Shark Bay, and isn’t even a town, just a resort. It’s famous for the wild dolphins who visit the shore every morning to be fed, and they have been doing this for the past few decades. The only dolphins who are fed are four or five of the mature female dolphins, and they are only fed a certain amount of fish. This reduces the chances of dependency and keeps the dolphins healthy. The dolphins are free to come and go as they please. Because we got there so early in the morning, we were able to see the feeding on our very first day! After the feeding (neither Kevin nor I were picked to feed the dolphins unfortunately), we had breakfast at the resort restaurant before checking into the hostel. After that, we of course had a nap due to our exhaustion from being on buses the whole night. We spent the evening walking along and enjoying the beautiful Monkey Mia beach.
The next day, I got up early to go
Transfer
The greyhound bus doesn actually go to Monkey Mia unfortunately. It stopped at the Overlander Roadhouse and we had to take a smaller bus over to the resort. to see the dolphins feeding again; and then both Kevin and I enjoyed some relaxation time on the beach. Around noon, we rented a little motorized glass-bottom boat and headed out on the water for half an hour. There wasn’t much to see besides sea grass, but it was fun nonetheless and very relaxing! After just hanging out in the afternoon, we went on a sunset cruise on the bay. This cruise was very low-key and not very exciting, but it was nice to be out on the water enjoying the sunset. We did see a few dolphins, however, who enjoyed swimming out front of the boat.
On Sunday, I again got up early to head down to the beach for the dolphin feeding. At this feeding, one of the mom dolphins brought her calf. He was so cute! After hanging out for the morning, we took a dugong cruise in the afternoon. Dugongs are marine mammals, similar to the manatee or sometimes called “sea cows”. They are endangered, and quite rare to see in the wild. People call them “sea cows” because they eat sea grass ALL day. Shark Bay, it turns out, has tons and tons of
Transfer - 2
Lots of animals on the road in the morning, just like this emu. sea grass, which makes it the ideal home for dugongs. In Shark Bay, there is a marine sanctuary which protects the dugongs, and consequently, Shark Bay is home to roughly 10% of the world-wide dugong population. And we saw tons of dugongs! Mostly, they just looked like brown blobs in the water, but some came quite close to the boat. We saw quite a few moms with calves. On our cruise, we also spotted some dolphins and a turtle. That night we got to bed early since we would be leaving for Kalbarri really REALLY early the next morning.
Hillary (and Kevin)
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