Last night Aída, Sharon and Hitomi came back from their whale shark cruise with a big smile on their faces. They got to see 4 whale sharks.
I think Aída spoke more english last night that in the past 2 months all together!
It transpired that despite of seeing 3 whale sharks the trip wasn't a nice and pleasant one although according to the three who did it, getting to see the whale sharks compensated for all the rest.
It seems the whale sharks were in open water and it was quite windy hence they had a very bumpy trip up to the the spot from which they went into the water so everyone ended up feeding the fish with their breakfast and in some cases even with last night dinner and then the sharks were really fast so for the first one everyone managed to follow the leader and reach the shark, for the second one only 10 people or so managed to get to the shark and it seems only Aída managed to get to the third one...it seems all the touring around Australia, with the snorkling, the walks, etc... paid its dividends. :-)
Perhaps the Olympic games of London 2012 are not out of the question yet!
After the disapointment of the missing manta rays we were all fearing the same thing would happen with the whale sharks and we were all quite happy to see that wasn't the case.
Today, however, after all excitement from yesterday, we had a boring and long day on the road. No stops, walks or anything remarkable...just plain driving through the outback.
I cannot accurately describe to you how boring it is to drive through the outback...and the stops are not much better. It is so hot outside that you tend to go the the shade provided by the bus and stand there for 10-15 min...that's how you streatch your legs...petrol stations tends to have just the bare minimun...i.e. petrol! sometimes you can get some sweets, crisps or even an icecream which will melt as soon as you take it out of the shop.
But we are resourceful people so Rob and I came up with a new way to kill the time during these stops...and this is a sample of our art-work, we call it road pictures:
What happened last night?
I suppose it's hard to imagine but it was quite safe to go to the middle of the highway (yes, that is a highway) and pose for pictures for 10-20 minutes without fearing to be run over by another car. You can see miles and miles in both directions so should a car come in your direction, you would be able to spot it well in advance...and there is maybe one car every 15-20 minutes...so pretty safe. I can't think of any place in Europe where you can take these kind of pictures during the day without the fear to be run over by a car.
We have a few more days of only driving so be prepared for more road pictures in the future. :-)
It was a fun way to spend your "streaching time". I sound like a prisioner talking about exercise time in jail, don't I? :-)
We also did a logistic stop (there was a place with a toilet in the middle of nowhere and just to see how far we were from civilization, check this out:
Thank God for mobiles!
However, despite of not having a telephone they had no problems with electricity:
We finally made it to Karijini national park and we had some permanent tents waiting for us in the local campsite. However, before going to or spot, we stopped at reception and I found the below sign quite reassuring:
I kid you not, this was for real!
I think this summarise Australia for you. In Europe they would have closed down the place and call the exterminator...here is like...yeah...wear long pants...like that's gonna help with anything! If the snake fangs won't penetrate the Australian pants fabric I need to buy a pair of those!!! awsome trousers! I bet you can jump into a fire with them too.
Anyway...better knowing what to expect I suppose. :-)
After the instructional trip to reception we made it to our camping spot and it was quite nice:
Front left to right:
Scott, Rob and myself
Back left to right:
Daniela, Ludmila, Hitomi, Aída, Sharon, Wendy, Alan, Simon and Manu
After dinner I had some time to walk around and take a few sunset pictures
At night when I was going to the shower, pitch dark and just walking with my torch a snake just crossed my path, right in front of me...I didn't move and let it move out of the way at its own leisury pace...not sure what type it was since it was dark but just in case I decided to wait and give way. It seems the place has more than one snake around...and this one was just 10 metres away from the tents...
We all grabbed a swag and made it to the tents...it was a long day on the road, hopefully tomorrow it'll be a more interesting day! :-)
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