Advertisement
Published: August 5th 2009
Edit Blog Post
For more pictures from this leg of my trip check out the link...
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2318214&id=16912798&l=86b3acb5c7
Wednesday morning, Rowan dropped me off in Perth so I could catch the bus at 7am. We drove a few hours north through some rain to Nambung National Park, where we walked around and looked at Pinnacle Desert. They think the formation were caused due to acidic water disolving the limestone in the soil around areas where trees were growing. It was very interesting!! This is a view looking at the Pinnacles.
After lunch we headed to some sand dunes near Geralton for some sandboarding. Harder than it sounds! It's like snowboarding but on sand dunes with nothing holding your feet on the board. I had some very impressive wipeouts and tore an 8 inch hole up my pants. Haha. A good way to start the tour...
Due to all the rain, we were told that the Kalbarrin National Park might be closed, but lucky for us the opened it for one day, the day we were going there! It was an amazing canyon where some people did some abseiling. According to our guide, Dave, we got to see the park in a very
unusal state with waterfalls everywhere. Usually its too dry to see any water until you get down to the Murchison River. It was beautiful. Then we headed to another place in the park called Natures Window. We headed to Monkey Mia for the night. After dinner we all headed down to the beach to hang out and wait for dolphins. We saw tons of dolphins, some of them less then 3 meters off shore. Some people got to touch them. They came right up to us! Amazing!!!
In the mornings they feed the dolphins, again just a few meters off shore. It was cool but not nearly as good as the night before. We left Monkey Mia and Dave, our guide took us to a marine reserve called Ocean Park near Shark Bay. We got to see a bunch of fish, turtles, sharks and other ocean creatures. The highlight of the stop was most definitely the shark feedings!!! The tour guide dangled a fish head above the water and grey reef sharks and a spotted shark (I don't remember what kind) attacked the fish. It was awesome! Then we headed to Shell Beach, one of the longest and deepest
shell beach in the world. After that, we drove to Hamelin Pool Marine Nature Reserve where we saw stromatolites. Not really the most exiting things to look at, but they were one of the first living things on earth and basically changed the atmosphere to one that is mostly oxygen. Hamelin Pool is one of a few places in the world where living marine stromatolites can be found. We stayed in Coral Bay that night.
Today about 12 of us from our bus headed out to Ningaloo Reef, allegedly the best fringing coral reef in the world. We snorkeled just off shore in amazingly blue water. We saw a lot of interesting fish and coral, but that was just a warm up for the rest of the day. We were going to swim with Manta Rays!! We had a spotter plane trying to find some, but even when they found one, it was a finiky male who didn't want to be followed. So, we got back in the boat and headed to the shark cleaning station. Here there are many small cleaner fish that clean sharks teeth and gills. We floated about 7 meters over a large piece of
coral, then I saw a small shark, probably about a meter long, then from nowhere, a big shark, about 2 meters long swam about 5 meters underneath all of us. Awesome! After we ate, we tried again to see the Manta Rays. After three attempts (I saw the Manta for a second on the second one) we finally go to follow the Manta Ray. He was about 7 meters below us and a meter or two in front of us. He was about 2 meters in diameter! We followed him for a few minutes before he sped off. It was definitely a very amazing experience! We left Coral Bay for Exmouth, had dinner, then got a fire show from Dave!
We got a bit of a lay in before heading out into the Cape Range National Park. We started by driving all the way south in the park to Yardie Creek Gorge where we did a short walk. Then we stopped at Oyster Stacks for a swim. Oyster Stacks is a really shallow coral beach where we did some snorkeling. It was less than two meters deep 200m out then only got a little deeper. Again, I saw amazing
fish and coral! After a quick lunch I went back in the water hoping to see a shark. It worked! I saw a two meter grey reef shark. I followed him from about 3m away for a minute or so until he saw me and jetted away. It was amazing! After that we stopped at the famous Turquoise Bay. Here we got a chance to swim right next to Green Turtles. I saw three turtles between 3 ft and 4 ft long. Afterwards we headed out to Vlaming Head Lighthouse Lookout. For sunset we watched from a small beach near the Lighthouse where we walked around the rocks and found octopus and cucumbers
Most of the group left today but 5 of us stayed around. Niall and I were going to do a Snorkel trip to see Whale Sharks but they had already left the area so instead we decided to see a little more of the park. We got picked up in a 4WD and headed thru the Ranges where we saw a lot of native plants and went in a natural cave that was used by the indigineous people for sacred ceremonies. We then headed to two
more canyons, Charles Knife Canyon and Shothole Canyon. Both of these roads were made for access to try to find iron ore in the ranges. None was found in these two locations but was found nearby.
One day of relaxation and catching up on things then we had to caught up with the next tour and head to Karijini.
More to come soon...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.039s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 10; qc: 21; dbt: 0.0183s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Jenna
non-member comment
sandboarding
maybe your booty is too big and sexy and that's why your pants ripped, JUST A THOUGHT! miss you and again, i'm ridiculously jealous of this trip. so glad you're having a great time and seeing so many beautiful things! talk to you soooon!