A bang and a whimper - Nico and gang do Broome

Some trips end with a bang, others with a whimper. This one had both.

After sleeping near some massive termite nests on the way out of Exmouth, we made our way to Karijini's stunning gorges where emerging differences in schedules and travel styles led to some frayed emotions. I tried to be fair and reasonable, but underlying frustrations and, though it was never said aloud, I think different understandings of proper respect as well, drove wedges into our fun as deep as the gorges we clambered through. Patches were attempted as we left the park but a cool undercurrent persisted on the long drive to Broome via 80 mile beach.

First came the bang. Our most interesting night of the trip materialized from thin air when we bravely followed the sounds of reggae music on an empty street to crash an aboriginal/islander holiday party. Somewhat fearful at first, our initial hesitation was put to rest as we were greeted with open arms, genuine good cheer, some funky dancing, and delicious food and drinks (though the turtle and dugong cooking in the traditional manner beneath the soil were for family consumption only). Even that, though, wasn't enough to save us; we agreed the next day that the two who had been planning on staying with me would remain in Broome as I continued on. We hoped that it would enable us to end on a positive note.

I walk to a nearby hostel, hoping to put a sign up advertising my new lift offer; I now have three spots to fill and still hope to leave tomorrow. There's someone already standing there. "Looking for a lift to Darwin?" I ask hopefully; "You're kidding me" comes the reply. "Nope." "You have room for my friend?" "Hell yah."

Within half an hour my new team was assembled. I was on a high.

The whimper came that night, the last we were to spend together. One by one, my friends told me that they didn't want to share their pictures with me as we'd originally agreed and repeated throughout the journey. Those were the pictures I had been planning to share with you; my own camera had been broken from the start. I'm sorry to say that now I have none to display. Though sorely disappointed, I hope that the incident doesn't continue to cloud all my good memories of our adventure.

Check back soon for Four wheel domination - Nico and gang do the Kimberley.

Happy little whalesharks - Nico and gang do Ningaloo Reef

"Happy little whalesharks" sang the girls in their highest voices; "Happy little whalesharks" followed the guys in their deepest. It was a wacky end to an awesome day of snorkeling with those majestic fish that are anything but little; the biggest fish in the sea, whalesharks are thought to grow up to 18 meters long. Even the juveniles we swam with - which, being inquisitive, truth to bump us with their enormous heads to figure out what we were - were 3 meters long. Awesome.

The whaleshark expedition was the finale of a weeklong snorkel-fest up the Ningaloo reef (named a world heritage site the day of our whalesharking) that also featured six huge sea turtles (one I kept up with for at nearly 10 minutes), a reef shark, and world-class coral. And twice when I seriously feared for my life: the first after swimming past two sets of breaking waves in Lefroy Bay to see what was on the other side (toes were bleeding after fighting my way back through those) and the second while bring caught in the menacing currents of innocent-sounding Turquoise Bay. The only thing that kept me from panicking was the sight of a man watching me from the shore, a stone's throw from the life preserver placed there for situations like mine. When I finally crawled, gasping, onto the beach, he said, "I didn't think that you were going to make it." When he showed me where I'd fought from, I understood why.

Though we've never resorted to the French Market ("When you steal from a supermarket," told us a French girl in Carnarvon who's brother had just been caught. "Every French person does it"), we have become quite creative getting our supplies at times. Best was at Red Bluff, when, after enjoying the stunning sunset, we ran out of gas mid-dinner and traded cupcakes for a can of butane and collected firewood (comically and illegally) in exchange for some special pizza from a group of surfers. And after camping for free on beaches all up the coast, we (despite my protests) camped one night in a park in town, were caught by the police who luckily didn't fine us, and ended up in a limestone quarry instead.

Check back soon for A bang and a whimper - Nico and gang do Broome

Did somebody order a krabby patty? - Nico and gang do Monkey Mia

Our next destination was Monkey Mia, made famous by a few families of wild dolphins that gamely head to the shore nearly every morning to interact with the locals. As usual, the journey proved more than we bargained for.
After a brief stop to see millenia-old stromatolites, which are about as exciting as their name suggests, we got some bait and took one of our trip's many unmarked off-road dirt paths; this one, uniquely, led to a beach comprised entirely of little white shells. Armed with my fishing rod and some thawing squid, Chuck and I head off into the water, into the sunset, in search of dinner. We figured we'd get thigh deep before casting the line. So we walked. And walked. 200 meters out we hit what looked to be a sand bar but was also just shells. Kept on walking; the only thing that got deeper were our feet, which sank well into the mud with every step. After a luckless hour of casts, we returned to find that the girls had prepared tea and cookies for us - we were already falling into gender stereotypes. This only got clearer later when the guys built a fire after breaking some of the biggest branches by driving over them with the 4wd. Beast.

In Francois Peron National Park, we caught some beautiful fish and spotted rays, sharks,dolphins, and turtles from a sweet lookout. It was going pretty smoothly (besides a hasty retreat from the water after a shark sighting at our beach and backing up King Dave into the camping table which somehow managed to survive - "cruuuunch" "Is that the table?") until we decided to take the shovel out the second evening to hunt for crabs. Miraculously, we found a huge one in its hole on the second try. Shocked, Chuck asked, "What do we do now?" "Hit it with the shovel!" I replied in line with our plan from the start. Whack. Crab down. Suddenly, Leila shouts, "What are we going to do with it now!?" Before I have time to respond with the obvious, "We eat it," Chuck lifts the crab up with the shovel, chucking it as far as he can into the ocean. Once we stopped laughing, I asked, "What'd you do that for?" "I don't know, I just panicked."

We never caught another crab.

Check back soon for Happy little whalesharks - Nico and gang do the Ningaloo Reef.

And special shout-out to our latest hero, Grant, an auto-electrician who rescued us on a Saturday afternoon when everything was closed to fix not just our brake lights but half a dozen other issues as well. And a couple more things Monday morning. And he did them well, providing good company and welcome advice to boot. When we tried to pay, he accepted only a token amount - "I know what it's like to be on the road". If you're ever in Broome and want to rent a car, you're in good hands with Grant. Cheers mate.

Camping on the beach - Nico and gang do Kalbarri

After a three day test run down south with Chuck and Maya to surfing and wine mecca Margaret river that featured some friendly Taiwanese who'd just bought a broken car, getting shown up in the waves by a 14 year old girl surfing champion, climbing a 75 meter tree with a wicked view, snorkeling for stingrays, and an overly friendly possum at our campsite, the full group assembled in Perth for our full departure (once I'd finished up my final project at UWA and had a surprise goodbye party courtesy of Tim).

Our first destination was Kalbarri national park, a small corner of the coast cut with beautiful gorges and clouded only by the bad weather we had when passing through.  Though the park was nice and our impromptu ballroom and salsa dance party at a hostel outside the park (with a middle-aged Australian man and a Dutch girl) was certainly entertaining, what should have been a simple day and a half drive to Kalbarri ended up being most memorable as an introduction in dramatic fashion to what were to become two of the strongest recurring themes of our trip - getting help from very friendly Australians and doing stupid things.  Though the help has come from Aussies of all shapes and forms, like the  young recently divorced tyre mechanic in Geraldton who directed us to free camping on the beach in the one spot that the rangers don't check - "I've used it quite a few times in the last couple months" - and the disembodied voice that called out to us with an offer of a covered clothesline as we hung our wet clothes on a tree in a caravan park (we found where it came from on the third try), most of it has been from elderly folks with big hearts and accumulated wisdom from several trips around the country.  We were about to meet the first of those now.

As we approached what we thought would be a free campsite at Sandy Cape, we noticed a sign requiring payment for the night.  Confused, we decided to check out the site first and drove to the far end where we thought we'd have the most privacy.  Noticing a entry spot to the beach, we decided to go for it; why have a car with four wheel drive if we're not going to use it?  Despite my very limited 4wd experience, I knew to instruct our current driver to put the car in 4 low while I locked the wheels.  For the first 20 seconds,  it was awesome.  Then the car stopped moving.

We got out and, sure enough, we'd driven far too close to the water and the tires were stuck deep into the sand.  The driver got nervous, so it was up to me to try to get us out.  I tried to back it up as far as I could, but we reached a point where the wheels were spinning, the engine was coughing, and we just weren't going anywhere.  And the tide was inching closer towards us.  The panic was too.

Suddenly, four figures appeared out of the night.  An older couple and a younger couple who'd heard our noisy attempts up at their campsites and guessed correctly what was going on.  The men got our shovel out and started getting to work while the women chatted on the side.  As they pushed and I continued to try to reverse, one asked, "Did you put the engine in 4 low or 4 high?"  "4 low, is that wrong?"  "No, that's right; just sounds like it's in 4 high."  Sure enough, the driver had put it in the wrong gear.  Fixing that, finally things began improving.

But that still wasn't enough.  After a few more minutes, Terry, the pensioner, told me,  "If you don't want the ocean to take your car, you've got to let air out of the tyres."  I'd known that reducing tyre pressure was important for driving on rocky roads; I hadn't realized that it was even more important for driving on sand.  Finally free, we thanked our saviors and went, a little shaken, to a site right next to the beach that Terry directed us to.

In the morning, we got some visitors - Terry and his wife had walked over to check on us and invite us to their trailer for morning coffee.  When we'd packed up and drove over to find them, the wife was standing on the road waving us over and Terry had his pump to refill our tires already out and ready to go.  They shared some travel tips along with the coffee, loving every minute of it, until finally saying, "What are you doing staying here listening to us?  Drive off, explore, have some fun!"  Comforted that the magnitude of our stupidity was outweighed only by the generosity of our hosts, we did.

My own reality show for a day - Nico and gang do Western Australia

As I've told some of you over the past few months, my life in Perth, though lovely, was not quite exciting enough to warrant a blog.  From the very first night of our road trip though, when we decided to drive onto a beach to camp and got stuck within a minute, it was clear that that had changed.  I've been lazy and without battery for some time (sorry!) but I'm finally ready to write again.  Soooooo here begins Nico, Chuck, Maya, and Leila do Western Australia; I hope you enjoy.  To make up for lost time, I'll start us off with a big one.

We'll go back about a month, when I finally had my rugged old Nissan Patrol 4wd - "King Dave" - ready to roll, camping and snorkeling gear and emergency car supplies filling up the trunk and straps installed on top for my surfboard and boogieboard to give us some serious Aussie street cred.  Now came the most important part - finding travelmates.  These were the illustrious backpackers with whom I was going to spend the next month (at least) 24/7, sharing petrol, beds, fun, food, blood, sweat, and a lot of cheap wine, so I could not take this task lightly.

First I put a post up on the local couchsurfing group, which had served me so well in the past - alas, got no bites (which prepared me for our mostly luckless fishing attempts since).  I then resorted to Gumtree, Australia's Craigslist equivalent, putting an ad up and responding to a few others; it was a bit riskier than couchsurfing, but had a much wider audience.  I communicated with a few that didn't fit for various reasons, mostly time-related, before finally finding a real possibility.  Contestant #1 was a German girl, friendly and a chef(!) but pretty quiet and reserved/hungover.  She was on her way to see Hangover 2, so she earned points for that.  Overall, not a bad option but I decided to hold off a commitment for the time being.

Contestant #2 was also a German girl, who was holding a bag full of meat ("It was on sale") when we met.  Good start.  We got a six-pack and decided that it would be nice to drink it outside on a bench in front of a fountain despite suspecting that this wasn't strictly legal behavior.  Sure enough, a couple of youngish cops came by after an hour or so and knew exactly what was going on.  I prepared for the worst.  "Where are you from?"  "Germany and the US."  "We know that you can drink in public in Germany; is it legal in the US?"  "Depends where you are (and if you have a brown paper bag)." [As far as I know it's only ok in New Orleans' French Quarter, but to be fair I have made good use of that exception.] "You know, if any other officers had found you, you would have a $200 fine immediately."  "That's a lot."  "But you seem like nice people and it's a quiet Thursday night, so we'll give you a pass; you just have to pour out the remainder of the open bottles."  "Fair enough."  "So, we know we shouldn't be encouraging this, but which Aussie beers do you like?"  We all laughed and chatted for a few minutes, then with a smile and a wave they went on their way.  "Gotta love Australia."  And I knew I had found my first travelmate - Maya.  Maya's foreign charm has helped us since as well, like when we were stopped by police a few days ago for a burnt-out taillight.  Also didn't hurt that she (who was driving at the time) hadn't bothered to put her shorts back on after the beach we'd just been at, leaving her bikini bottom in full view.  Needless to say, we didn't get a ticket (and they even saved us from overpaying for petrol at the servo we were at, directing us instead to a little petrol station up the road with cheaper prices).

Since I wanted a full variety of nationalities, this meant that Contestant #1 was out.  I also wanted a balance of guys and girls, so Contestant #3 was a Canadian dude.  Blind dates between two guys are always tough, so it's nice to find some safe common ground to start with, like agreeing in our first call that it was a good idea to get a caravan going with a group of girls we'd both responded to on Gumtree who were probably getting their own car.  "Can't hurt  the odds."  "My thoughts exactly."  [We ended up leaving earlier than the girls, who then passed us when we took a spontaneous detour up a peninsula to Gnaraloo on the recommendations of the old Aussie couple that had rescued us from the sand on day 1 and a Margaret River surfer chick who helped me find a sleeping Maya hidden in the bushes.]  When Chuck was game enough to join my volleyball friends and I on a night out and oozed classic Canadian friendliness, I figured he was a pretty safe bet, even though he didn't join in the dancing at Carnegy's ("I need to drink way more before I'm ready to dance").  Turns out that Chuck only needs half a glass of wine to start impersonating a kangaroo and hopping towards ones that are chilling near us on a cliff.  Though he displayed none of that (very welcome) goofiness that first night, I could tell that he'd be a good bro and welcomed him on board.  

And then there was one.

Contestant #4 was French, a self-described "creasy girl" who got points for being a fellow couchsurfer and for adding a new language to the mix.  I think that you can usually tell in the first minute and almost certainly in the first hour after meeting somebody whether you'd gel on the road, and with her I didn't quite feel it.  Still, I wanted to leave three days later and needed a fourth rider and she fit the bill, so I gave her a tentative yes but told her I had agreed to meet one more person before making a decision.  When my travelmates asked me later the reason for my hesitation, I could only respond, "She was wearing Crocs." "Ahhhh" they all nodded with understanding [Mordechai and Estee - if you read this, no offense intended.  I'd be happy to travel with both of you next time we're not continents apart.]

Luckily, by the time I returned home from that, Contestant #5 had responded to my e-mail; we met the next night.  Fresh from a road trip along the South Coast, this Swiss Girl seemed prepped for living out of a car.  I'd also had a great time traveling with half-Swiss Jenn and Jeremy in South America, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt.  When we had a fun night wandering around Freo in search of a live jazz performance she and her friend claimed to have seen advertised (even though bouncers we asked about it thought we were crazy because we most certainly were not in New Orleans), I knew that it had been the right decision to wait out Contestant #4.  With Maya, Chuck, and now Leila on board, my team was fully assembled.

Let the fun begin.

Since my internet/electricity access is limited out here, I can't post on a schedule, but I should be able to get something up (likely without pictures) every few days.

Check back soon for Camping on the beach - Nico and gang do Kalbarri. 

Why I love Rotto - Nico does Rottnest Island

1:  Quokka. Like mini-kangaroos, but cuter. You can pet them.

2:  Snorkeling at three different spots - and that didn't even exhaust all of the options. Back might be a bit burnt though (but not as badly burnt as James was tonight after spitting out the habanero pepper that Ash and I, being real men, were able to conquer).

3:  Spotted a baby stingray hanging out on the ocean floor.  Let me get within a few inches before darting away; that baby can move.

4:  No cars allowed, leaving a beautiful 20K bike ride around the island (with many beach/snorkel breaks included, of course).

5:  White sand and all kinds of calm turquoise water just a half-hour boat ride from Freo - it's like having a resort island in our backyard.