Life's two beaches

Well, where was I? Next stop was in Coral Bay further up the coast. This was a nice little resort town, with a good beach and snorkeling. We stayed in a caravan park there, and sat on the beach most of the next day. The water was nice 'n warm by now, and the temperature mid-twenties... absolutely perfect. Some time to work on my tan.. some time for the Germans to work on their burns... heh.

Next stop was Exmouth, a few hundred kilometers further up the coast. We ended up staying for a couple days at a caravan park here, it was very nice. We drove to the local national park and did some snorkelling and sunned on the beach. Another nice location, not too many people and lots of stuff to see. I must've spent a couple hours out swimming... I finally had to stop when I was more wrinkle than man. Plus my legs were starting to cramp up. haha



The next day was a big driving day... we started out with Stephan driving, and had our second driving incident. He took a right turn onto the main road in Exmouth, looking for the bottle shop... I wasn't paying attention since I was messaging someone on my phone while I had service. I look up, and there's a car right in front of us flashing his lights (driver cursing too I'm sure). Yeah... my heart was pounding. We didn't get in an accident or anything, but Stephan didn't live that one down for a while.

We stayed that night at another caravan park at a town called Tom Price out in the outback. Cool little mining town... I haven't seen so many trucks since I was back home in Canada. Getting to it was interesting (well, frustrating)... Stephan was driving again, and we got onto a dirt road for 50 kms or so. Stephan and Ann are both German, and neither had ever driven on dirt roads before. It took us well over an hour to go the whole 50 kms... every time Stephan hit a rough patch he'd brake and go 20 km/h for a while. And the ride was still rough. Ah well.

Next day was probably the highlight of the trip, in Karijini National park. I was driving along these dirt roads, and things went a little quicker. :) But the gorges in this park were amazing, and of course nothing beats swimming holes by waterfalls. I have a picture of me sitting in the waterfall (of course) but it didn't turn out that great. Just imagine me sitting down there, I guess. heh.



The rest of the day spent sitting around different waterholes, and hiking around through some of the gorges. Here's one more picture from the park, me driving along the road when it was paved again.



By this time we had close to a thousand kilometers to cover, and only two days left so most of the time was just driving after the park. I probably spent most of the time behind the wheel, because the others weren't very good at staying awake when driving for more than an hour. (with nothing to see!) I don't think they have careers as truck drivers, unfortunately.

Well, here I am in Broome. Not a bad little town, it's not quite the place I expected but it's still pretty good. The hostel we've been staying in since we got here is probably the worst I've been in, unfortunately. They have a free pool table and a swimming pool, but other than that everything is terrible. You're not allowed to bring your own alcohol on the premises (!) and the drinks they serve are horribly overpriced. Also, there's a jukebox, and they keep skipping songs people pay to hear because they don't like them. Heh, just a ton of little things besides that. With hostels, it usually doesn't matter about the facilities too much, it'll be a good place no matter what if the people are good and friendly. That's really lacking here. So tomorrow me and Ann (Stephan has to leave for Germany today... d'oh) are going to move to a different hostel, closer to the beach. Ohhh yeah.

My plans for this week are to start the job search over again, and have a couple more beach days so I'm not quite as white as I am now. haha. Don't really know what kind of work I wanna do yet, but something on a pearl boat or working at a pub in an outback town would both be pretty sweet. I've still got a bit of money saved from the last job in Perth, so I don't have to rush or anything.

That's all for now, just a couple more random things from the roadtrip.

-most times driving on the wrong side of the road: Stephan
-most animals almost hit: Tie, me and Stephan. I almost hit a lamb and a kangaroo, and Stephan almost hit a couple cows.
-most beers in one night: Me. heh
-most times almost lighting the campsite on fire: Hey, also me :)
-best tan: Ann
-best burn: Stephan
-most times getting lost: Tarja. One of those inside jokes from the trip, "Where's Tarja?" Over and over... haha

Heh.

-Brad