Coral Bay, yabba (Oct 28 - Nov 1)

Prior to leaving for Coral Bay I spoke with another guy I met from Geraldton, Dan, and he mentioned that he would be going up to Exmouth via Coral Bay. So I thought great, I'll just catch a ride with him from Coral Bay and go and see Exmouth. After a few days I realised that he wasn't coming, I didn't really put an effort forward to get in contact with him though, but it would have been cool if he just showed up and we had a roadtrip to Exmouth.

Luckily I quickly forgot about Dan after meeting the three Swedish girls who were staying in my room. When they introduced themselves I thought it sounded familiar, then I remember reading an ad on Gumtree (a website used for various things, ride shares, jobs, etc) about three Swedish girls looking for a ride to Broome and sure enough it was them. So that was a good conversation starter. Also - they obviously outlined right off the bat that they were THREE SWEDISH GIRLS looking for a ride north. I ended up hanging out with them quite a bit going to the beach, going out etc, pretty fun times. One night we ended up at a beach party and one guy was basically a beach party in himself. He had a sweet fire spinning set up and was doing that, I brought this dude that I met who runs the quad bikes and he was a much better fire spinner, we were also freestyling and just doing general gangster shit. I started conversing with him because he had a Fresh Prince shirt on so the whole night we were singing the Fresh Prince song and yelling PRAISE THE FRESH PRINCE - hilarious times.

I didn't just party it up and lounge on the beach while I was in CORAL Bay, I actually did some snorkelling and saw some really cool marine life. I went on a snorkelling tour for $50 and it was well worth it. We saw all kinds of different fish and coral (some 1000 year old coral) as well as turtles and sharks. Our guide brought us to a spot called a "shark cleaning station" this is where reef sharks go to get their teeth cleaned. They swim around this area with their mouths open and small fish swim inside and eat all the guts and stuff out of their teeth...then swim back out again! It was really funny to see, it actually kind of "normalized" sharks for me, showing me they have at least some control over their constant lust for blood. These were just small grey reef sharks anyway, they were pretty afraid of us. I also went to a shark nursery, where the mother shark leaves her babies to learn how to hunt and eat - it was just a small secluded bay, you weren't really meant to go in or else the mother shark would stop leaving her babies there. But I did a handstand in there regardless *Kanye shrug*.

The girls ended up finding a ride with a dude originally from NSW, I stumbled upon this one day as I came into the room. All I heard was...Oh ya I might be able to find you girls in...damn it, if I was in there and they weren't I could have secured that ride. He had a tiny car though and these girls had three huge suitcases, so I was still holding on to the idea that they just wouldn't fit and I'd be subbed in. But being blonde blue-eyed girls from Sweden kind of makes dudes make anything happen (sidebar: and he was trying to fit the suitcases in, I was hovering to see if it would work, he goes "Can you help me squeeze these bags over..." I turned and straight up said "No...why would I help you fit their bags in? I don't want this to work").

So anyway, they set off in the morning, one in the front and two squeezed in between the window and half the middle seat. I had a pretty nice night after they left, sometimes getting away from the people you've been hanging out with, even if only for a few days, feels very good. You don't want to get stuck hanging out with the same people all the time, or else you'd just stay home with your real friends. I ended up taking the bus to Broome the next day for $158AUS, which is cheaper than I heard it was going to be - I was told it would be closer to $250AUS so that was ok.

The bus ride took about 20 hours, but if you've been reading my blog you know I'm a professional at sleeping on long journeys. So I watched Rambo 1 and 2 (effin AWESOME movies - I didn't know they were so deep, I thought it was just killing like Rambo 4, but they take you on an emotional journey), after the movies I just slept. There isn't much scenery between Coral Bay and Broome, mostly just flat desert and shrubs to see. You can tell when a creek or a small river is coming up though because suddenly there will be trees and then you see the water then more trees..... and then back to desert. Midway through the bus drivers changed from two dudes to this lady - and for some reason she had a REALLY bad attitude (I cleaned that up from what I wrote in my journal), she was threatening to leave people behind if they got off the bus and yelling at people - wasn't cool at all.

Basically it was a pretty poor bus ride but I made it to Broome safely so it was alright.

Peace & Love

On the road again: Paying is for tourists (Oct 19 - 27)

As my end date grew nearer I was starting to think about how I was going to get the heck outta Geraldton. Luckily the same week a guy I knew in the backpackers, Shannon, was going to Port headland (about half way to Darwin up the west coast) so it all worked out swimmingly. He's originally from Carnarvon so he was going to stop there for a while to see his parents and then continue on. At first the plan was, Shannon would just drop me off at Monkey Mia because I wanted to see it and he didn't really want to stay. After hearing all kinds of hype about Monkey Mia it was pretty disappointing. There is no town, it just a resort which I knew before hand, but you have to pay $12 per person just to get into the resort then pay for parking and accommodation...not ideal. It looked nice enough though but too much hype and money, also it was pretty dead because it's out of season.

So in the end we decided to stay the night and head off in the morning to Carnarvon. The best part about Monkey Mia was when we first arrived and went out on to the jetty a turtle popped up out the water. But I don't know if that is worth $12 entry fee.

We set off in the morning to Carnarvon, I was excited to see the "real" Carnarvon from a local's point of view and we were also planning on doing some camping further north for a few nights. If you couldn't tell by my previous post, I wasn't too keen on the place before but I thought I should give it another crack. When we reached Carnarvon I dropped my stuff off at the backpackers and we went to go meet Shannon's dad. Shannon's dad is pretty awesome, he's originally from Germany but he says its way too cold there so he stayed in Australia after traveling here when he was 20 something. He's traveled all around the world and has a black belt in Karate (sidebar: He had to go to Japan to get it from one of the highest ranked black belts in the world. And he said during his exam that guy kicked his ass but it was great). He was also known around Carnarvon for being a badass black belt and the police were told to stay away from him. Apart from all of that though he was a nice guy and funny.

I later met Shannon's mum who is originally from Holland and also quite well traveled. She is very nice and the youngest of SEVEN. I was invited over there for dinner for the two nights we were in town which was very nice. We set off in the morning, Shannon, his dad (Wolf) and myself, to go camping at the Blow holes. Camping in Australia is a bit different than Canada because it's so hot all the time. So all you really need is a swag (Swag: A canvas lining with a roll up mattress and blanket inside. It can zip all the way around so you can be inside it. So it's like a 1 man tent with a bed at the bottom, but you can sleep in it like a sleeping bag too with your head out.... make sense?...and yes it is really called a SWAG).

When we arrived at the camp site, a bit further down after the blow holes, we had to check in with the rangers. Once they found out Shannon and Wolf were locals we got to stay for free, she said she doesn't like to make locals pay, works for me! As we went further there were a bunch of shacks everywhere that people own/rent for holidays and such. But when you're local you just camp in front of some one else's shack and everything's cool. So we found a nice spot and set up shop. We found some old bed frames behind the shack so we had our swags off the ground and everything, try and get me now brown snakes!

Shannon introduced me to "Jaffles" which is just basically a toasted sandwich. But you use a jaffle iron and you just throw whatever (we had stew in them sometimes) you want in there and then toss it in the fire, always delicious. The weather was beautiful the whole time we were there, and we were doing all kinds of awesome stuff. Spear fishing, snorkeling, grabbing oysters and other sea creatures right out the water and throwing them on the fire, eating like damn hell ass kings. First time I had clams, trocker shells (sp?) and sea urchins, clams are REALLY good, sea urchins I think need to be with something like on a cracker, still quite tasty though.

The second day we were there the family that owned the shack we were in front of rocked up in the afternoon. At first the didn't seem too pleased, but again once they found out that they were locals everything was alright. The family just kinda did there thing while we sat outside with the fire going and drinking it was funny. Later on when they were leaving, they just came for the day, the dad turns to Shannon and I and says "You guys smoke pot?" and does the universal bong hand signal. We're like..."maybe..." but still suspicious, he pulls out about $80 worth of weed and says "Got anything to put it in?" and dumps the whole thing in a bag for us and says "Have a good weekend boys"....most random thing ever. When we told Wolf he just laughed and said WELCOME TO CARNARVON!

All in all turned out to be probably my best weekend in OZ so far. Once we got back into town Shannons mum let me stay at hers until we set off again. By this point the new plan was that Shannon would take me to Coral Bay and then he would continue on. So after a few more days in Carnarvon we were off again, Wolf decided to go with Shannon to Port Headland and take the bus back (its like 2000kms away). They spent one night in Coral Bay then left in the morning.

Thanks for the great time gentlemen, we need to do it again sometime.

Peace & Love