Today it was the last day for this excursion, in fact it was only half a day since the other half would be used on coming back to Perth. Some people continued for another 2 days, for some reason we only had 3 days booked, perhaps because from previous experiences they had decided the last 2 days weren't worth it.
We spent the night in Albany, at a local backpackers. The first thing we did in the morning was to go and visit the ship replica they had in exhibition in town. It is meant to represent the penal ship used to bring the first prisoners to this part of Australia and later to bring provisions for them.
They brought these convicts and soldiers here in order to build the first european settlement on the western coast...it seems the French were lurking around and the Brits didn't want to do Canada all over again.
The arrival of the ship changed the way the tradicional owners of the land, the Minang people, lived.
See the story here:
After that we all went to visit the memorial for the dead soldiers on the first and second world wars.
Then another of those odd decisions. We spent the next hour or hour and a half in a local cafe, just waiting for the time to pass. The guide was meant to leave us at lunch time and we still had a walk to do this before lunch so he decided to stay put at the cafe until the time came for the walk and then lunch and finally getting rid of us.
It was a hot day, about 30C or so and I would have prefered doing the walk in the first hours of the morning when the sun is not that hot but I suppose that would be way to logical, it's better to wait sitting in a cafe until the sun gets really hot and then do the walk. :-o
With all that time in my hands I decided to walk around the area where the cafe was and take a few snaps of anything that moved...or didn't move but could look good framed on one of the walls of the house I do not have. :-)
Nothing like being bored and having time in your hands. :-)
After all this adrenaline pumping experience waiting for an hour and a half by the cafe we finally got in the bus and drove to the place where the walk was to take place.
Because there was another driver coming to pick some of us up and to drive us back to Perth, we had a count down, wherever you were in the mountain, at 13:00 you were meant to turn around and walk back to the base.
The climb, Bluff Knoll
was marked as a 3-4 hour walk
but we only had 2 hours, it was all climb, no flat areas or resting places just a plain steady climb. People were warned before hand, that it was hard and if you were sore from climbing the tree the day before or didn't feel you had the fitness to do it, you shouldn't feel like you had to. In the end only 8 of us attempted the climb.
It was a fantastic walk, the views were spectacular but your legs were working hard all the time, most of the climb had steps like below
The views were really worth the trip though. Not just the views from the walk itself but also the views from the top.
Views from the top
After that we had lunch and took the new bus back to Perth. The driver though was a reptillian crazy and every time he saw one on the road he would slam on the breaks, stop and go for it.
First he did it with Mr lizard
Then, another break in which the bus almost gets out of the road, just to get Mrs Snake, but this time, we got a volunteer to hold it. :-)
Thank God we didn't have seat belts on this bus othewise, as I was wearing a blue T-shirt, I would have finished the trip with the Galician flag tattooed on my chest.
And we finally made it sane and sound back to Perth...
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