Perth to Albany - Day 1

--
We got really lucky with the weather in the last 3 days. It rained quite heavily but only at night or when we were having lunch under a covered area. The rest of the time we enjoyed a fabulous sun and some perfect 28-29 C

Should I have to pick a word to describe this excursion, that word would be 'odd'. There were some good bits in it but some things were a bit difficult to understand like for example our first stop.

We had been in the bus for quite a while so it was time for a break, hence we stopped at the Tuart forest just by the sign below.

Not sure whether you can read what is says, but esentially it says that in this forest there is a tree which is 39.6 metres tall and another one which is 600 years old!!

Wouldn't you wanna see them?, well, me too. So everyone got off the bus and after a few minutes without nobody moving I went to the guide and asked what any other normal person would have asked,

me: "so, shall we start walking then?"
Guide: "no, we are not going anywhere, this stop is just to streach our legs."
me: "Are you telling me that we stopped here, just in front of this sign and we are not going to see the 600 year old tree nor the 39.6 metre tall tree?"
Guide: "yep"
Seeing the disapointment all over my face he added:
Guide: "But don't worry, tomorrow you'll be able to see some trees you can fit 20 people inside"

(Like as if I had some kind of weird tree fetish).

We were there, I could touch the sign, we could see those two trees but instead we spent 15 minutes standing still in front of the sign... go and figure!

There were quite a few more missing oportunities like this during the excursion but I must add it wasn't always like that, sometimes we actually stopped and went to see something worth it... :-)

The first "real" stop was as disapointing as the first real one. We stopped at a small village where they had the largest wooden pier in the world... I didn't bother in taking a photo, I could only get a piece of it and they were doing some works on it so all you would see was a fence, however there were lots of cockatoes by the beach .. they have them everywhere here in Australia...

After that we had lunch...so far it had been quite disapointing although things were just about to pick up.

The next stop was at the Ngilgi caves, these were some caves discovered almost 100 years ago, they were quite deep. Imagine an eleven storey bulding, that would be the depth of the caves...and you had to climb those stairs back up.

and for the adventurers they had a narrow tunnel you could crawl through

This was a 5 minute crawling exercise that would convert your white T-shirt into a black one...kinda like a reverse washing machine...after that I had to go to the toilet and wash my t-shirt...luckly it was a hot day and it dried up before I got back in the bus.


Right after the caves, the sun came through and the sky opened up leaving a beautiful blue sky with a perfect sun so we went to the beach. :-) Visiting this beach with bad weather would have been quite disapointing, but with this fabulous sun, it was great.

We spent an hour or so by the beach and then we went to Canal rocks.
These were a set of natural channels formed in the rocks.

And from there we moved on to our next destination, Aída's favorite stop in the whole excursion.

If you like chocolate and you die, this is the place where your soul would come to rest in peace. :-)

Apart from taking as many samples as you wanted which made the visit much more interesting. They had absolutely everything you can think of in chocolate...even chocolate massage oils, chocolate candles, chocolate bath salts, you name it!


As of late, there's been a movement in this region to get a bit more artistic so they've planted some cows all over the place and some local artists painted them. You can find these odd painted cows everywhere, and I mean everywhere, see exhibit one:

Yes, that's the roof of a local pub and what's under the cow is a surfboard. You've probably seen some more of these cows in some previous photos, otherwise I'm sure they'll crop up in some future photos, impossible to avoid them, they are everywhere.

After that we had another technical stop...everyone standing still for 15 minutes...

well, not exactly, this time there were a few emus in the field next door and a couple of the girls decided to go there and take a few happy snaps...something scared one of the emus that started running towards one of the happy photographers that seeing this big crazy bird coming her way started running in the opposite direction...imagine the girl screaming and running in front of an emu. I'd wish I had been making a movie of the whole event. Priceless!

As usual, by the end of the day we went to take a few photos of the sunset to the Leeuwin national park.

And that's all for today folks!

--