Wet and Wild in WA

I've finally escaped from the world of expensive and slow internet so here's the latest. I love coral bay. It is really chilled out and as a backpacker it's really easy to do stuff. I wanted to go whale watching, but apparently the humpbacks have left, so I decided to go swimming with a manta ray. This is not what killed Steve Irwin - I don't have a deathwish! Manta rays are pretty big, but have no sting. THe one we found was 2.5m wide, but they can get some 4m wide in the bay. THe one we found was very chilled out and happy to have 11 snorkellers following it aropund for 40mins. I managed to get some photos with an underwater camera, but haven't got it developed yet, but we were about 2m away from it most of the time. Then we headed out to the outer reef and went to find some reef sharks. THere were about 9 of them circling under us which wasn't so bad from above, but when they turned side on they looked pretty vicious. Luckily they don't eat humans and actually are more likely to swim away from you if you head their way. That was pretty cool and we also saw some turtles, so was a good trip.
That night a load of friends I met earlier on arrived, so we hit the beers and cheap backpacker special pizzas and planned a bbq for the next night. Food here is really expensive and it took us 30mins to find any chicken, but we made some great kebabs. Alas the hostels don't trust you with real fire, so the bbq's are flat and just heat up, this meant only the pumpkin touched the surface and was getting cooked, so we had to take everything off the skewer and just cook it all together. It still tasted pretty good and better than the dodgy pasta meals I've been cooking. That night me and ira headed to Monkey Mia to see the wild dolphins.
Monkey Mia is just a resort on a beach where the dolphins come in to be fed there is no town there, so it's a bit isolated and the internet is really expensive and slow. The dolphins just come into shore when they want to, and in the morning they get fed, I was very lucky and got to feed one, which was pretty cool, but alas I have no photgraphic evidence of it, so no-one here believes me!
Then I headed onto a place called Kalbarri where I did a bit of Kayaking in the bay and then went on a walk to the gorges nearby. THe walk turned into a bit of a climb up and down rocks along a river. It was a lot more fun than a dull walk and we swam in a nice pool a few kms down the river. The next day I was pretty achy, but have decided I need to get a bit fit again, so maybe it'll kickstart that.
At the moment I'm in Geraldton with Sally and Uli who are also doing the west coast. Yeasterday we went to see a cathedral which the lonely planet raves about. I was a bit underwhelmed. It's more like a church than a cathedral, though it is painted with orange stripes over alot of the inside which is kind of odd. WE took a guided tour with a sweet old retired guy who unfortunately was one of the worst tour guides I've ever had. He didn't know an awful lot about the cathedral and kept saying "oh yes I meant to find out about that" or "Oh yes I meant to add that to the talk". His best effort was when he didn't know what a stained glass window was about, but there was a plaque on it that I read to him that explained it all!
Anyway it was quite amusing. Am staying in a hostel at the moment which is very retro with 80's sofas and bar and high ceilings in all the rooms. It has free a pool table though, which is great. Am hoping to go windsurfing tomorrow which should be funny as I haven't done it for 15 years.

Life on the beach

I've spent a lot of time on beaches recently, it's such a tough life! Cable Beach in Broome was pretty amazing. Very few people are there at the moment because it's so bloody hot - 38 degrees at one time, but it's got really clean white sands and luckily you can hire umbrellas for the day as you can't stay in teh sun for more than about 15mins at a time. You can also do boogie boarding there which was fun and the sea was so warm it was like being in a bath. The waves were too small for surfing, but pretty good for the boogie boards and I didn't end up drinking that much sea water! I can also recommend sunset there if you ever make it to Broome. Other than the beach though, there's not a lot to Broome,some surf shops,a supermarket,McDonalds,Subway, it's probably nicer when it's about 10 degrees cooler. I also took a tour into The Kimberleys, which is a group of national parks a couple of hours out of town. Went to a place called Windjiana Gorge where normally you can see loads of crocodiles, but we only saw one and that was a long way away. Then we headed to Tunnel Creek which is pretty cool as it is an underground creek you can walk through. The deepest it gets at the moment is knee high, but they still walk through it when the water is waist deep. I'm not sure I'd like to go there then as there are 6 freshwater crocs that live in the creek. Saw their tracks, but none of them wanted to come out and play!
Had a long and not particularly pleasant bus journey to Exmouth on Sunday. It took about 21 hours with one change of coach at 2am. All the way there was an annoying buzzer going off which apparently meant one of the cargo doors was open, but it wasn't an they coulnd't fix it. The video player also broke 10 hours in. Not as bad as it could have been though as both the coaches coming the other way had broken down and were 3 hours late at one point. The next night a german girl who is heading the same way as me had a 3 hour breakdown in the middle of nowhere and they had to flag down a truck (which took an hour) to get a lift to the nearest roadhouse cos the cb radio wasn't working!
When i got to Exmouth at 5am, I had a 3 1/2 hour wait at the visitor centre for my pickup to go to an eco lodge on the Ningaloo reef. the place is on a beach with a lagoon where no-one goes and the coral reef is about 2 metres out from the beach. It's very chilled out and I did a lot of snorkelling there. Saw 3 turtles,starfish,several giant clams, a reef shark and hundreds of fish. I was there for 1 1/2 days, then had to head back to Exmouth which is not the best place to be if you haven't got a car. There's not a lot to it, and even the dull town beach is about 20mins walk out of town. At least i only wasted one day in town there and have now moved onto Coral Bay which is as it's name suggests a bay with lots of coral in it. The water here is a bit colder, but really calm, so will grab some snorkelling stuff and head out there later. This is another 2 pub town,but the hostel where I'm staying seems good with stuff going on so should be a good few days.

Kangaroos are a bit stupid...

...but I'll get to that later. Took a trip to a Litchfield National Park, which is like the Kakadus but closer to Darwin and smaller as well. Also went on a cruise on the Adelaide river, where they get crocs to jump up and grab food off a line. Think it's a bit of animal exploitation, but fairly imressive nonetheless. Did a fair bit of swimming (but not in that river) and then it rained!Fortunately not for long, and the rain here is pretty warm, but it was not what we wanted. Strangely there are a lot of Germans here who all speak really good english, so was hanging out with a few of them in Darwin as well as a Canadian from Alberta and then one night we seemed to acquire a dutch guy, a dane and 2 french-canadians from Quebec which was quite random but good value as there was a band playing at "The Vic" which were ok as well. The vic is a big backpacker venue, which plays relatively stupid games, but if you have a nice tour guide then they give you many meal voucheers which gets you free dinner every night!
On Saturday I headed to the deckchair cinema, which was good, the deckchairs are fairly comfortable and they give you a pillow as well. Saw Wah-Wah, which is Richard E Grant's semi-biog thing. It was ok, but the most interesting bit was when a bat flew overhead!
The next day I started my epic trek on the Greyhound Bus. 10 hours to Kununurra, there's not a lot to do there, but I was staying 2 nights to break up the journey so spent the 1st day getting up very early to go to a place called the Hidden Valley which is a national park right on the edge of the town. It was good, but very hot. Later that day I went to Kelly's Knob - which is actually a big hill that you get a good view of the sunset from! Yesterday I spent the day mainly in the swimming pool as it was 40 degrees in the shade and so too hot to do anything. Had to get the bus at 6pm for the overnight trip to Broome. This is where the kangaroos come in. They have suicidal tendancies. We hit at least 3 in the bus, most of whioch were small, but one must have been pretty hefty as it broke a headlight and put a big dent in the front of the bus. They are really dense, I was watching one that stood at the side of the road and then just as we got to it it darted out. Fortunately we swerved that one, but they have no idea of the green cross code. We also narrowly missed a cow that had wandered into the road as well, but made it to Broome intact. There's not much here either, but I'm staying near cable beach, which is supposed to be one of the best beaches in the world, am about to head there, so will soon be able to agree or not!