Australia & New Zealand Adventure Part VIII: Perth to Broome and the Northwest

Yes, I guess it is time for yet another installment of"Anita heads out west in search of the perfect sunset,more flies landing on her eyeballs than one can safelycount, and, er, the ultimate cyclone experience".So much has happened since my last email, which Ididn't get to write, and oh! its all so confusing:I'll just start from where the last "story" left off -we are in

Perth

just back from Wave Rock.Well, disaster was about to strike. I called our tourcompany (who we were headed to

Broome

with) the nightbefore our departure to re-confirm our pick-up only tofind that they had no record of our booking! Therewas much profanity that evening. After spending all morning in "negotiations" (anyonewho has had business negotiations with me when I am apaying customer will know that this is a tumultuoustug-of-war struggle in convincing arguments) with theperson who our tour company thought (to which I amincredulous) had either worked hard enough or had thebrains enough to manage the reservations department, Ifinally secured a 100% refund of our tour up to

Exmouth

and a free alternative tour that shortened ourjourney there by one day. Not bad, I guess. I wasmost upset that we would not be travelling to MonkeyMia to see more dolphins, but at least I had seen themin

Bunbury

.SO, after one more day in

Perth

, we set off to

Broome

(in

Exmouth

, we were to re-join our originally bookedtour).Turns out, as fate would have it, that 3 day tour wasby far the best experience of my travels to date. Thegroup was fantastic (4

japanese

girls who lovedhearing me sing, a funny and cute aussie

tour guide, aDutch man called

Christiaan

with razor sharp sarcasm -what more could I ask for?) and the scenery justspectacular. The first morning, we left at 6am, so ittook at least until 1pm for my grouchiness to depart.We spent the morning sand boarding (well, the groupdid, I thought "screw that in this heat, I'm going toswim naked in the ocean!" - which I did.) and thendrove on to the Pinnacles national Park. This is awonderfully phallic national park. With phallic sandsculptures in a beautiful gold color as far as the eyecan see. Enough said about that. It provided me ampleopportunity to act out and say inappropriate lewd andoffensive things to everyone to get shock factor. Ah,good times, good times..... We drove on to camp but we stopped first at a realWest Australian Roadhouse (you know, the kind you seein the movies about Oz, sweaty greasy men who look upfrom their beers to check you out and then decide ifyou are worth shooting with the rifle they havestashed under the counter or not)to visit "George".No, George was not some roadhouse human oddity, he wasthe pet joey kangaroo that the family had rescued fromits dead mothers pouch after they hit here with theircar. (altogether now,

Ahhhhh

...and "what bastards"!)George stole my heart. Quick as lightning. He cameright over, let me cuddle him and even gave me a peckon the lips. He also found my beer very interesting soI tried distracting him with apple which he ate rightout of my hands. Now if only I could find a man likethat....After a good

ol

"Barbie" we collapsed. Early morningto come.Went to

Kalbarri

National Park in the morning and wentabseiling with Giovanna down a 250 foot gorge. Now,I've only abseiled once before, at a

Butlins

camp in

Wales

with Giovanna when we were 8! So, this wasquite something to be doing it together again....The park was stunning - very much like

Utah

or

Arizona

but with a unique feel to it ; probably because theywere gorges not canyons; there is an extremelyscientific and logical explanation for the differencesthat I can't remember - sorry! Abseiling was fun - iliked to push off the rock wiggle my legs mid air andpose for my photo with my tongue hanging out. Well,its me and I make no apologies.It was hot. My God it was hot. We were like Sausageson a spit slowly roasting as we turned in the sun. SOwe found a lovely

swimming

hole (no

crocs

, youpromise???) and jumped in. Ah, refreshing. This wasto be a repeating highlight of WA - lots of abominableheat relieved several times daily with a dive intocrystal clear water under a giant rock escarpment andtropical waterfall. This was where it was at.After a natural waterfall massage (I had to rescue mybikini top at one point about 200 meters downstream -whoops - eye candy for anyone paying attention!!)Ifelt

a lot

better. Until I was dry in about 30 secondscoming out of the water and the thousands of flieslanded on my every exposed orifice and beganritualistic mating dances.Loved

Kalbarri

. But better was yet to come .

Thats

not correct grammar, but hey, this is email.The following day we drove to Coral Bay and

Ningaloo

Marine National Park. This is the west coasts' answerto the

Great Barrier Reef

, and it was spectacular.

Christiaan

(who was fast becoming like a brother toGiovanna and me) and I opted for a day

eco

-tourswimming with Giant Manta Rays, sea turtles, Reefsharks and other reef snorkel spots. Wow.Incredible. I have some amazing underwater shots ofme swimming with these incredibly graceful creatureswho glide along like giant

Frisbee's

. I also havepictures of my ass red raw like a fresh lobster fromthe sunburn I suffered that day. Ouch.We drove on to

Exmouth

and had a kinda wild nightsaying goodbye to our group. They all asked me tosing for them, which of course I did, then theJapanese girls sang, I cried, we all got piss drunk,danced and did....um,....other crazy things you do (A

pash

- look it up in Australian dictionaries!). Whata great night. And our new group and tour guidelooked about as exciting as a wet flannel shoved downyour pants. Not happy about that.Yes, our tour guide was dull and STUPID (oh, I amsorry for being mean, but SO STUPID). And the otherswere just not worth the breath, so

Christiaan

,Giovanna and I pretty much segregated ourselves allthe rest of the way up to

Broome

.We drove and drove and drove the LONG ASS way to

Karijini

National Park, and spent our first night in"swags" (these waterproof, supposedly bug-proof,sleeping pad things) under the stars. It wasbeautiful, if a little smelly. Quite the

quintessential

"wow, I am in the middle of nowhere,smelly, eating red dust, could get eaten alive by somehighly

venomous

snake and/or bugs simultaneouslywhilst swatting flies from my face, but I AM

croc

dundee

, and by god this is fun!, right???" kind ofexperience. Memorable.The next day (sorry this is taking so long) we did afamous hike known at "the Miracle Mile". It involvesspider walking through gorges, treading

trepidatiously

along tiny ledges with "brains would smash into amillion pieces" falls underfoot, jumping into pools,swimming a few kilometers, climbing, and generallyother really cool but dangerous stuff. The scenery isquite simply, (and I know I do keep saying this) themost spectacular of any place I think I have visitedon earth. If you have to maim, cheat or kill to getto

Karijini

- you should (well, you know what I mean).We descended narrow gorges which had walls of layered

rock

towering hundreds of meters above us and swamthrough narrow channels clambering over rocks blockingour path. It was quite a challenge and felt so goodto complete.We swam in more pools with names like

Fortescue

falls,and fern pool - all glorious "

tarzan

meets the bluelagoon" feelings to them. Just magnificent.Evenings were interesting out in the bush. Giovannaand I really had to "get over" our fear of bugs,because you basically share your food with them.There were crickets, moths,

mozzies

, flies, locusts,and other flying things with no names landing on ourheads, necks, arms, and, plates!

Christiaan

got sosick of our shrieks that he ate a moth in front of usjust to shut us up. Which of course it didn't.However, this was not as bad as the next place. Wedrove to Eighty Mile Beach which is exactly what itsounds like. Probably the most pristine, white, wideand deserted beach I have ever stepped on. We spenthours after sunset looking for baby turtles who werehatching that night. All we ever found were thetracks of baby turtles and the tracks of the tens ofcrabs that would eat them before they made it to thewater.

I know

, sad.That campsite took "insect fear" to new heights. Justtaking a shower was amusing because if you were in thebathroom for longer than 3 minutes with the light on,what seemed like the locust Egyptian plague descendedupon you in the shower. They were just falling offthe ceiling on to you, it was a scene that made Psycholook like a General Audience movie. I have to say, myresolve against these critters is somewhat stronger.The following day we arrived in

Broome

, finally! Itwas quite a quaint little town with a huge Asianinfluence to the food and architecture. We all wentto Cable beach for the sunset, which was a littledisappointing because these huge black clouds lookedlike they were rolling in. And they did. For fourdays straight.Yes, my memory of

Broome

will always be the cyclone.At first it was quite exciting, you know, "hey folkswe've gone to Yellow alert, so the whole city isshutting down, looks like you gotta buy your beerright here!", to "hey folks, its gone red alert, sowe're getting the body bags out of the basement".Literally, it got a little scary. We lost power on thesecond day, as rain pummeled the hostel and wind ragedthrough our semi-open "common area" where you got morewet than the inside of the bottle of beer you wereconsuming despite it only being 7 o clock in themorning, because you couldn't sleep, and you were sobored that alcohol was the only way to dull the pain.The cyclone hovered 80 k offshore and then veeredsouth, so we never felt the full brunt of its power.But everything was flooded, nothing was open, couldn'tgo anywhere, flights were filling up....it was anightmare. On top of this, Giovanna had picked up anasty rash on our outback trip and she was not goingon the next trip through the

Kimberley

with me. Idiscovered that there were only 2 other people bookedon it in any case, so I cancelled and cut my losses.Originally we were going to fly to Darwin together,but the flights got sold out, so I decided to comeback to

Perth

, and Giovanna flew to

Sydney

for a week.Yes,

Broome

is kind of a hazy memory of drinking,dancing, loud music, exciting weather, not-so excitingwet clothes, being stuck in our dorm room, playingchess and debating with

Christiaan

, and the heavensdumping all they could give. On our last afternoonthere, we did manage to go out for food (we hadsurvived on what little we had bought at the marketour first night there, and what the hostel thankfullyhanded out to hungry people) and visited the crocodilefarm. Got to hold a baby crocodile which was cute.By this Saturday, i was done with

Broome

. Had to getout. Severe Cabin Fever. So I flew to

Perth

.

Thats

where I am now....I will leave my last few days' of adventure to thenext email - this has been long enough.Hope you've stuck with me till now - I can honestlysay that West Australia has by far been the best partof my trip so far. It is stunning, full of reallylaid back, friendly, people and it has an other-worldvibe to it. Can't really explain it, but despite theheat, the flies, the distances, and the Wet Season, Iloved every moment here.Well, till next time.

Hasta

La Vista. No worries. Nodramas. She'll be alright, mate.