Margaret River Surf Adventures & Rottnest Island

Hello All,
Well if you are on my blog, then I am sure you are wondering what I have filled my last weeks in Perth with? Mostly, on weekends sitting around with my friends while they are off work and hanging out with lots of laughs, making memories that will last a lifetime. However, during the week, most of those friends work and as I am on vacation, I needed to find somethings adventurous to do with my time.

MARGARET RIVER SURF ADVENTURES WITH MAX
Well I met a new friend, Max. He is an Italian, now Australian, who works for himself over the weekend selling his jewelry in Perth. Then takes Mon-Thurs as his time to surf. He lives in his van, complete with kitchen and bed, and takes backpackers with him down the coast on these trips with him to split the fuel cost and make new friends. He will then give them a surf lesson for a small fee if they desire. Then, in the afternoon when he is done surfing, he takes them around and shows them the wonderful sites of the wine country of Margaret River, complete with tastings :)

I met him on the street one day admiring his jewelry and we started talking. As he has once lived in Hawaii and loves the Grateful Dead, you can imagine how much we had to talk about right off the bat. So for my last 2 weeks in Perth I went on these surf trips with him to Margaret River. We would leave after he stopped working Sunday nights, and come home Thursday afternoons, taking as much time as we could to stay out of the city. We camped at the beach every night, sleeping in the van as it was quite chilly at night. Then he lent me a board and and wet suit and we would surf in the mornings and go to different vineyards for wine tastings in the evenings. Then we would cook a HUGE Italian meal every night. I should say HE would cook a HUGE Italian meal every night -he is also an Italian chef, and very picky about how to prepare Italian food! Man, did I eat well... too well! I was definitely getting what we called "pasta belly". It was delicious :) I wasn't very much help so while he prepared dinner I took more pictures of sunsets :)

The surfing part of my Margaret River days was a massive adventure as the surf was the biggest I will even think about getting into. To be fair, I only ever stood up once as I spent most of the time just trying to stay on my board and out of the white water! Not like my little waves on the east side of Oahu back home. It was good to be in the water again, even if I was just paddling around, as I hadn't been on a surf board in 14 months. But I know I like my little waves better :) My time in the water would end long before his. My arms would give out, and it was cold! We were surfing in wet suits, which I had never done before. So I would take out my camera and practice taking photos of the surfers and beach landscapes with it. Above is Max catching one of the smaller waves, over some dangerous rocks!

I very much enjoyed this time to myself, out of the water and taking photos. Hey, I very much enjoyed my entire time on these "surf trips" with Max, we had a great time together and I definitely made another great friend. We lived the camping, vagabond beach life and I loved it!

ROTTNEST ISLAND

Another thing I did one weekend towards the end of my stay in Perth was visit a small island off the coast called Rottnest Island. It takes about 40 min. by ferry to get there. The island is 40 km's around (24.8 miles), of which we biked every inch. I went for a day trip there with my friends Brian and Viktoria, who you may recall had taken the road trip with me earlier in the month up north, over the new year. The three of us had a blast biking around all day. We also snorkeled and I got to test out my new "underwater" camera. Unfortunately we picked a bad spot to snorkel, so we mostly just took pictures of each other goofin about :)









The island is basically bare. Dry and sandy, with little vegetation. There are many birds. I even saw what Viktoria and I dubbed a "punk rocker" bird, as it had what looked like a black, spiky mohawk! Also inhabiting this island is an animal called a Quoka. I am pretty sure this animal only exists on this island. But not 100% sure on that. I know I have never heard of its presence anywhere else in Australia. They look like little Wallabies with rat faces and eat right out of your hand. I even got to pet one. I was later told they have a disease, so I should go wash my hands. Why this person couldn't tell me this info before I petted it, I will never know. All in all it was a great day, with very many happy memories :)