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 :)

NorthWest New Years Trip '08-'09!!

Happy New Years Everybody! I had the most amazing New Years!! Definitely the best yet. Two days after Christmas, my friends Mic, Brian, and Viktoria and I rented a camper van and took a road trip up the north west coast. We started the trip off going to a friends house a few hours away and having a party there. There were only about 10 of us, but with these 10, that's all you need for good laughs and a fun time! The next day we all went to the beach, where it was so windy that we had to set up camp on the pier to escape the painful pelting of sand.



The next day we left our friends place and drove up north about 1000 km's before deciding to camp. It was along this drive I saw the most awesome sunset. We saw it from 2 different places and in between the colors had changed so much! It was soooo beautiful. The road trip was off to a good start and we had covered lots of ground this first major day of driving. So around 9:30 we pulled over and set up camp next to a beach on the side of the road. It was a good spot. We had a few drinks and went to bed.




The next day we drove up to our final destination, stopping first at Coral Bay for an afternoon at the beach. This beach was so beautiful. There is nothing for miles and miles in between each place to stop. Sometimes you worry about whether you have enough fuel. The road is just mile after mile of straight road with red, dry, dirt on either side. So when we got to the beach, with water, it was very refreshing, even to see. But getting in the water and getting rid of the heat of the day was fantastic.

We left there that evening and drove to our final destination, Exmouth. This place turned out to be crap, with no good camping places near the beach. It was the night of the 30th and it is where we had planned to spend New Years. But when we got there and saw what it was like, we changed our minds and drove back down to Coral Bay, where we had spent the afternoon.
Because it was the 30th, the place was packed and we couldn't get a camping place, so we drove back out to the road and away from town about 20 km's to make sure we didn't get a ticket. We spent the night in the middle of the road! I am quite serious, it was the middle and no cars came for hours. It was so surreal and with no city lights of any kind around, the stars looked amazing! Whenever a car did come, we had about 20 minutes warning to move. The road was so straight that we could see the cars' lights 20 min before it got to us. We goofed around in the road for a while, basically because we could. We stayed up all night pretty much, goofing around and tossing back a few.

The next morning we went back to Coral Bay. We still couldn't get a spot for New Years Eve, but decided to just park the van and spend it on the beach. We would accept the fine they gave us the next morning, but we weren't going anywhere! Besides $100 split 4 ways isn't that much. We got on the beach at about 11AM and stayed there until about 5:30AM the next morning, leaving only once for water and warmer clothes when the sunset. The colors at this beach were absolutely fantastic! There were high white sand dunes, red rocks and cliffy shoreline, tall green beach grass (but not to much), and the water was this vivid blue color and so so clear! Sunset was incredible as well. A great last sunset for 2008! We played in the dunes, surfing down the dunes on our boogie board, we also got fishing poles and fished all day. We didn't catch anything. The rest of the time we spent just splashing and lounging in the surf.











We had the best time, the four of us. We managed to find our own little piece of beach where no one else really came. A few people walked past all day, but that was it. We weren't even sure when it was midnight, so we made it up and had a little countdown. We beat the people who give the fines out by half an hour that morning and ended up not even getting fined!! Wahoo!! We spent the night on the beach and had our first showers of the trip the next morning at 6AM. A great way to start the New Year, wake up on the beach, watching the sun come up, then having a very refreshing outdoor shower!! I loved it :) This pic is of us right before we showered.
Then we started the very hot ride back to Perth. We spent 2 days doing it, stopping again at our friends house the night before returning to Perth. We stopped at many beaches along the way, but were unable to spend much time at any as we had to get back. Plus we were all feeling the effects of over exposure of the sun. We did stop at one beach that had no sand at all, only shells... millions and millions of little shells! It was a truly fantastic trip with memories that will last me a lifetime!
More pictures from this wonderful trip can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com.au/find.barlow/PerthNorthWestRoadTrip0809#

Christmas Time in Perth

Merry Christmas!!
I hope everyone had as wonderful of a Christmas as I did! I woke up and called my parents. They had sent me a care package for Christmas, and I was a good girl and waited until Christmas morning to open it. Sop first thing, I called mom and opened my package with her on the phone. I was so excited for my homemade cookies and receese candy. I also got a shirt and a change purse/wallet I was not expecting, but badly needed! My package was awesome and opening it with my mom on the phone almost made it seem like I was opening my presents Christmas morning back home. But then the good-bye came and mom and dad's voices disappeared. I looked out the window at the start of a beautiful 95 degree day and said to Toto, "We're not in Kansas anymore!" or Delaware, as the case may be. All though I missed all my family and friends back home and our Christmas traditions dearly, I still managed to have a wonderful time here.
I have made many new friends at my hostel here in Perth. I came here specifically to spend the holidays with friends of mine I lived with during the Aussie winter in Brisbane. A lot of them have all ended up in Perth now, so I came to join the fun.
My friends and I had a lovely day at the huge park in the city named Kings Park. We barbecued all day and had a massive feast! The park is a beautiful setting. It overlooks the city and the river. Unfortunately I do not have any pics from Christmas Day, however there are pics of another day we spent at this same park only days before. If you want to see the park, these pics can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/find.barlow/KingsParkTrip# .