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| Erin's Western Australia Journals - 11-26-02 Today we woke up late - I'd gone to bed early enough, but getting to sleep was another matter, and waking up was very hard! For some reason, I'm having real trouble adjusting to the time zone here. Woe betide me when we fly on to Adelaide next weekend and another 2 hours added to our internal clocks!!! We finally got out of the motel around quarter after 9am, and made our way to Meelup Beach, just 20 minutes away. This was the first item on Adele's suggested list, and it was a gorgeous beach indeed! The water was 2-toned blue in aquamarine and sapphire shades, and we were a bit spellbound as we wandered along the white sand. We camped out on some rocks for about a half hour, just soaking in the sun and cool breeze. But we had other things we wanted to see this day, so we took a few pictures to show everyone back home and took off. Our next stop was the Ngilgi Caves, a spot about 20 km further down the coast. While waiting for the rather expensive 'semi-guided tour' (only 5 minutes with a guide for $16 ASD?!), we happened upon some of the 'schoolies' we'd been told to avoid, and they sold us a couple of their extra tickets - for $2 ASD each!!! We lucked out there, and the group was fun and lively, so we hung near them as we entered the caves. The stalagmites and stalagtites were really impressive, and we wandered through the tight corridors and steep steps with no little amazement! After about an hour in the caves, we were ready to head back up to sunlight and quickly vacated the area before the suspicious guide could ask us if we were really part of the Perth High School tour group!!! We took a bit of a wrong turn heading south, and ended up in the tiny but gorgeous beach town of Yallingup. As we left, Glenn pulled over for a hitchhiker, and we took on a girl from Israel, backpacking and hitching around Australia for a year. I can't recall that we got her name, but we took her for the next half hour with us down to Margaret River, the highly popular destination of many schoolies. We stopped off shortly at a woodcarver's studio, but found nothing of interest, and were more interested in lunch by the time we made it to Margaret River. We dropped our passenger off at the nearby caravan park, then found a fish & chips spot for lunch. After a bit of souvenier browsing, we quickly checked our email (it'd been 5 days!!!) before heading to Hamelin Bay, a beachfront spot I'd seen on several postcards, in hopes of finding an overnight spot. Sadly, it was just another caravan park, and we were in no mood to camp, so we continued on to the furthest town on the southwest coast, Augusta. There we found a very nice youth hostel (rated best in Australia for 5 of the last 6 years!), which gave us a 4-bed room all to ourselves - reminds us of Sir Toby's in Prague! We picked up a bottle of wine and went to a local restaurant overlooking the river mouth (near the ocean outlet) for a quiet dinner before retiring early. I did a few journals before bed to reduce my guilt, while Glenn planned our next day. |
| Ngigli Cave's dripping stalagmites & stalagtites were amazing |