SB Part 2

So...the last post ended in the Coral Bay. In the morning when we woke up there were the HUGEST dragonflies flying all around. There were millions of them and it was absolutely beautiful, but unfortunately we only ended up killing them as we drove...

Also, there were termite mounds everywhere, dotted randomly through these grassy plains. There was something eerie about their presence and randomness, like we were in an alien landscape. They were these irregularly shaped mounds, all with the same pointed cone at the top, and the same deep rust red of the earth. No one got a decent picture of them sadly.

In Coral Bay we snorkeled as I wrote about in an earlier post and that was super cool. Plus kayaking felt really good after so much sitting and driving. Since I was in a kayak with our guide Jerry, I couldn't slack off, so I good a nice little work out and naturally we beat the others back to shore. After that it was time to head north once more and we drove the last couple hours up to Exmouth. We had borrowed tents from my friend Cath's cousin, and we knew one of them was huge so we had only been using the little one with three of us in there and two in the van. That night we decided to set up the giant tent. Turned out it had three rooms and was a twelve person tent. Such luxury!

Dinner cooked by Anna...cooking on the floor is the best kind of cooking!

The next day was ANZAC day which is basically veterans day in Australia, so the other girls got up for the dawn service. There was no way I was getting up for that even though we had been getting up early with the light, just not that early.

Then we adventured off to the beach! Exmouth is on the eastern side of the peninsula. Because it is a reserve, there is only road road that crosses it, meaning that to get to the snorkeling beaches on the western side you have to drive all around the tip of the peninsula. So that we did and arrived at Turquoise Bay! Imagine that stereotypical white sand beach and warm blue blue water...that was Turquoise Bay. Plus there were way less people there, which had a certain appeal.

We swam and played in the shallows and did handstands in the water and basked in the sun and snorkeled. The snorkeling was amazing - you just swam offshore and flippered about surrounded by all these amazing fish. There were parrot fish (and that's where I stop knowing the names of them), yellow ones, tiny bright blue ones, these really huge dark ones, silver ones with spots down the side, stripy ones, fish that looked like Gill from Finding Nemo, soft coral, hard coral. We just swam around like mermaids taking it all in. I know that I've made more than one Finding Nemo reference, but that's really what it felt like, and just to add to that...we were in a jelly forest! There were heaps of jellies floating on the current and you wouldn't see them until they were right in front of you so I spend the whole time half freaking out. Robin was the only casualty though and got a sting on her shoulder. It turned a bit red and stingy but wasn't too bad. Then me and AmandaPanda enjoyed a little beach yoga (we're not experts).

Then it was time to drive back before sunset when the roos come out to play. Dinner was once again delicious, and cooked on the floor in the light of a flashlight, with awkward wet bathing suit patches.

I will now digress to discuss food. I LOVED cooking and eating on our trip. It felt to good to be cooking for ourselves and the food was delicious even though it was so simple. Camping food is the best food. Plus it kicked St Cat's butt. Food up north was super expensive, just like gas, because its so isolated and everything has to get trucked in. A can of baked beans was like $3. Crazy. With four girls from America in the van, we consumed an inordinate amount of peanut butter. Amanda was part of that and she is a PB fiend. The only peanut butter here though is made by Kraft (ugh) and full of salt and sugar (double ugh). Oh well. Food was definitely one of the best parts of the road trip.

After dinner the others went to watch a movie that was being screened in the caravan park while me and Anna stayed behind to enjoy a bottle of wine, a couple vodkas, and revel in the glory of a summer night with endless stars.

The next morning was overcast although still really warm, so we spend the morning at City Beach. I don't really know why its called that because there is definitely no city in Exmouth. It is the only beach really on the eastern side of the peninsula and the currents must deposit all the shells and coral on that side. We wandered along picking up so many shells and bits of coral, collecting them in our shirts because we didn't have pockets. We were the only people there, apart from an old couple fishing. Me and Anna chatted with them and they gave us some sick shells. A couple which were HUGE. Bigger than your hand, like the size of your foot! The shells were amazing though - spirals, spiky, bright green...Mum would have been in heaven.

Then we went to one of the surfing beaches for a big and saw a massive sting ray in the shallows. We wandered along with it for a bit before it swam off. Turquoise Bay was calling us though so we headed back for a quick swim. Then we began the journey south, drove for a few hours until it got dark then posted up on the side of the highway in a picnic area where you can camp for free. It rained all night and I woke up with a cold. The rain turned that red red earth into red red clay that collected in a solid layer on the bottoms of your shoes and got on everything. We ate breakfast in the rain and I LOVED IT!

As we had been driving, we kept seeing signs with flood warnings and totally blew them off thinking they were ridiculous. But after a solid night of rain, there were suddenly lakes and rivers where there hadn't been any before. Taylor - this is what it was like when I called on your birthday!

I will leave the journey here for now (there isn't that much left I promise), and take this opportunity to digress once more on the subject of wildlife. Most of the wildlife we saw came in the form of road kill. There were so many roos by the sides of the road, but we had this handy sticker telling us what to do!

Once when I was driving I saw something in the road waaay up ahead, slowed down and stopped a few feet away from this fellow.

We also encountered sheep, cattle, emus, and 2 giant eagles that decided to stick around long enough to give us Planet Earth type views as they flew off.

Things to look forward to in the next post: Monkey Mia, dolphins, and the royal wedding!