Western Australia, Part 2

We came back from our road trip through the outback on Tuesday the 8th of March. We spent a few days in Perth, exploring downtown, Kings Park & the war memorial, doing a bit of shopping and arranging our next journey.

After quite a bit of hassle, we found a nice campervan to rent for 10 days. On Friday we had a last dinner with Craig, Kerran and Xandi (who would fly back to Asia on Sunday). Saturday morning we left with the van, a surfboard and two boogie-boards direction south-west coast. Our plan: beach-time and surfing.

In the previous two weeks, with Bram & Lynette and with Craig & Kerran, we were spoiled with lots of food, snacks, sweets and alcoholic beverages. We both had gained a few grams and now it was time for our own controlled and healthy diet again: 3 days solely fruit and veggies and from the 4th day onwards every second day.

Our first destination was the area of Esperance, but since this was a bit of a drive, we spent a night in Lake Grace on the way. After having a coffee in downtown Esperance, we continued to Cape Le Grand National Park (another 40 minutes east from downtown). This national park is known for snow-white beaches and tame (fearless) kangaroos hopping around. We arrived in the evening and tried to find a spot at the camp side at Lucky Bay, but they were full (first come first serve). We went for a small walk over this beautiful beach and met the first kangaroos, then drove back to the entrance of the park. There we approached a local farmer to ask if we could park our van on his property that night: No Problemo!

The following night we did spend at Lucky Bay, climbed the Frenchman’s Peak from which we had a beautiful view of the coast line, went for a small run & workout and spent the rest of the day chilling between the kangaroos at the beach.

After Cape Le Grand, we spent halve a day surfing and relaxing at Twilight Beach; a beautiful and untouched beach west of Esperance, with waves ideal for beginners and a beach brake without reefs. We would have loved to spend more time here, but since we still had to drive a lot, we left the same afternoon and slept that night in Ravensthorpe.

The next day was Sven’s birthday. Pam surprised him with a nice breakfast, a little birthday cake and a couple of nice presents. We then drove to Albany, found a free camp site just outside of town and then spoiled ourselves with fish and kangaroo stake at a fancy steakhouse.

After a morning surf and workout in Denmark, we made our way to the Valley of the Giants; an area with the biggest and oldest trees of Australia. This was the only day that the weather was not ideal, but for this activity that didn’t matter much. The size and the length of the trees were very impressive! We got an insider tip for a bush camp in the area and were treated with a beautiful detour through forest landscape, where we saw hundreds of kangaroos, about 20 emus and a massive fight between two bulls. We were the only ones at the camp site, and the forest turned completely quiet at nighttime – a very cool experience.

We got up very early to make our way to Surfers Point, Prevelly, so that we could spend the rest of the day hitting some waves. The next 3 days were fully dedicated for surfing in the area of Margaret River and Yallingup. However, unfortunately most surf spots were reef breaks and furthermore since it was weekend there were many more and better surfers in the water.
Another challenge were the shark-alerts. At some moment a helicopter even sent everybody out of the water due to the presence of two great white sharks. Later that day, we spotted a shark ourselves very close to the shore. Luckily this was just a harmless bronze whale shark.
Nevertheless, even with all those challenges, we were able to surf a few waves and this motivated us to continue looking for surf spots in the Philippines!

Too soon again, we were on our way back to Perth, and our little relaxing holiday within our travel was done. We had one last day in Perth with Kerran and Craig, did our laundry, worked on the blog and the pictures and packed our bag for again a new chapter: the Philippines!