Roadtrippin

It was very sad leaving Sydney and WakeUp, a few tears were shed as I said goodbye to all the lovely people there. But my three months were up, so it was time to go! I had a weeks holiday before it was time to return to real life in Norway, so my friend Jack and I flew over to Perth where we were to start our roadtrip.

I met Jack on my Kathmandu to Beijing trip with Dragoman last year, and he'd been staying with me in Sydney for about a month. In Perth we met up with John from the Drago trip aswell, and it was great to have a little reunion! We had the weekend in Perth before picking up the van on Monday, so we spent the days watching the RedBull Airrace which was great fun, and doing some sightseeing. How those pilots can fly! Wow.

On Monday we picket up our HiTop camper and set off, destination Exmouth! Western Australia is really beautiful, although some parts can get a bit boring with all the long streches of straight road. But there are some nice beaches, and we stopped several times for an afternoon swim. The first night we camped by a beach which was really nice, and got a good nights sleep after some spaghetti bolognaise and wine. The next day was our major driving day, we did about 800 km! It was a long day, but our cruise speed was about 120 km/h so it wasn't too many hours. Not far from Exmouth we stopped at Coral Bay, which is one of the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen! We went for a swim in the crystal clear warm water before driving the last bit up to Exmouth. About 110 km away I realized we didn't have a lot of petrol left and there were no petrolstations before Exmouth. 50 km away the lamp came on... It was pretty nervewrecking! So for the last 50 km I was gassing, cluthcing and rolling, gassing... We rolled into the petrolstation in Exmouth and filled 60,2 liters on the 60 litre tank... Phew!!!

The next morning I was picked up early as I was going out snorkelling with whalesharks!! First we snorkelled at a good reefsite at the Ningaloo reef before we went looking for the sharks. After about 15 minutes we found one! But he wasn't very social, so not long after we got into the water he dived. Luckily we found 4 others who were a bit more friendly! It was amazing swimming with them, the largest one was about 6 meters long! They are the biggest fish in the sea, so they won't move for anything, something I kinda realized when I went in the water to swim with one and didn't see it at first, turned around and it was right in front of me coming straight towards me! Help?
We spent about 5 hours cruising around and swimming with the different sharks before heading home, finishing off with a glass of champagne. A wonderful experience I would recommend to everyone!

We started our drive back to Perth in the afternoon. On the way back down the coast we almost killed a kangaroo (or it almost committed suicide by jumping out into the road in front of our van), saw a stingray and what we think were dugongs from a lookout, went to Monkey Mia but didn't see any dolphins, went to Shell Beach which is as you guessed a beach made of shells instead of sand, saw some amazing sunsets and visited the pinnacles which is a strange desert area with pinnacle rocks sticking out of the ground.

3160 km later we arrived back in Perth on Saturday, dropped off the van, spent the rest of the afternoon in Freemantle before Jack and John dropped me off at the airport. 30 hours later I was back in Norway! It's good to be home, but I miss the warmth...