Coral Bay: Part I

And just like that, our trip to Coral Bay is over. Sitting in the airport at Learmonth now waiting to board the plane back to Perth. Littttle stressed out about getting these blog posts up, going through the pictures, and, oh yeah, actually studying for my finals. But back to the beginning:

Double Update: Finally getting these posts up, back at Perth! Took me longer than I had hoped for to sort through photos and actually study. First exam over with, three more to go! 

Friday, October 29^th: Friday morning we all woke up and met for an earlyish breakfast before getting a ride to the airport. I called to arrange a big taxi to pick us up so was pretty amused when an actual bus was waiting for us outside. Everyone and their bags could have gotten their own row pretty much. The flight to Learmonth and drive down to Coral Bay was pretty painless and uneventful and soon enough we were pulling into the little town of Coral Bay. 

Coral Bay is a pretty small place, but has everything you could need. There was a supermarket (very overpriced though), a bakery (the source of many delicious meat pies), bottle shop, dive centre, and two or three cafes. Oh and there was also this incredible beach! The water here is pretty top notch – beautiful shades of blue and a warm but still refreshing temperature that is perfect for getting out of the blazing sun. One thing we discovered very quickly about Coral Bay is that it gets really hot. We arrived at the house around 4ish, picked up some groceries for the night, went for an end of the day swim to wash off our day of travel, and enjoyed our first sunset at Coral Bay. 

The house was everything we could have hoped for. Just realized I didn’t really take any pictures of it, but it consisted of a living room area, dining and kitchen area, three bedrooms, a porch, and a bathroom. It was supposed to sleep 10, but we managed to fit 11 in comfortably. Seeing as Coral Bay is in the middle of nowhere, at night, the stars really come out. 

Pretty breathtaking seeing that many stars at once. For whatever reason, these stars seemed to twinkle more than I have ever seen. Really made me understand where that expression comes from – at times the stars seemed to change shades of color from white, to blue, to red, and others (and no, it was not an airplane).

 Also, if one wanted to see a shooting star, you just had to look up and within a few minutes you were almost guaranteed to see one. At one point we thought we saw three shooting stars going off at once, but then realized that they were just bats picking up the light. Whoops! 

Can you see the kangaroo? Was originally going for a 3D cube but it didn't work out.

Not a bad way to end the day just lying on our front lawn watching the stars.

Fifth Entry - Cervantes and Lancelin

Writing on the way down south to Albany now! Here is the recap from our time in Cervantes and Lancelin. We pulled into Nambung National Park where the Pinnacles Desert is located around 5 P.M. It was perfect timing because not too long after arriving the sun started to set and  created a nice light on the rocks.

 We didn’t spend too much time in the park because we wanted to arrive in Cervantes before dark and those damn flies were back! The sheer number of rock pillars in the desert was quite the sight to see.

Our noble steed, Winston.

 Before long we arrived at the caravan park in Cervantes, where the owner insisted that we have a beer on the beach and take in the sunset. Sheesh … tough life. Celebrating a successful day we grudgingly obliged and witnessed a pretty astounding sunset. The clouds were in a perfect position in the sky and caught the light in really neat ways. 

While Devon, Kristen, and Colin set up the tents, Matt and I went to BBQ the rest of the sausages we had. So far I have cooked every night (besides the night we went out for burgers) so gotta go the distance now and keep the streak alive! Next to us was an Australian family who had a real deal BBQ. They made our grill of sausages look pretty pitiful. Took a picture of all the different meats they were grilling. To be fair the picture of ours was actually our leftover sausages. We had just grilled like 15 on top of diced onions so it looked a little less pathetic than that.

 After dinner and the one “nice” bottle of wine we had (a whopping $20 bottle I bought on our wine tour) Kristen, Devon, and I taught Matt and Colin how to play the card game Presidents and Assholes. Always a fun one to play. While playing, the beetles that were living in the BBQ area targeted me and for the next hour or so would fly right at me and try to climb onto my head. Seriously think they had a vendetta against me. Ended up finding one in my bag later in the car! They just wouldn’t give up! 

Soon we went to bed and woke up late (7 A.M!) to pack up and get ready to drive to Lancelin. We were going to do a dune tour in a buggy and possibly go sandboarding but the place was closed. Ended up being much better that way, because for 15$ we could each rent our own board and go ourselves! Spent the next two hours climbing up dunes and whizzing down them on the boards. 

Pretty tiring running up the giant dunes, but man was it worth it for once you got to the top, going down on the board was just so much fun.

If you look closely on the picture on the right you can see how much sand is on my beard. Colin said I looked like a Yeti.

 Here is a video of me going down one of the bigger dunes. Almost made it to the bottom but had to jump off running. Only problem is that when you are going that fast it’s hard to keep your legs underneath you so at the end I just shoot off the screen – almost looks like I’m doing a baseball slide.





Colin also found this little guy!

Hi!

 We returned the boards, made sandwiches in the parking lot, and are back on the road now heading to Albany. Pretty wild thinking that we are almost done with our trip already. What an adventure this has been so far. (Funny seeing how at the end of each entry I just can’t help but express what a trip it was! Hope I don’t sound like a broken record.)