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| June 18th (po-mo entry; bite on that) |
| 06.18.04 (4:11 am) [edit] |
June 18th
Coral Bay
25-28C Sunny, no clouds, just lots of sky.
Okay, so I'm now in Coral Bay. The bus ride was uneventful and went smoothly, as I slept pretty much for the entire ride. We (Caroline is the sidekick on this trip--one of the EP people) made it to the bus station in Perth(Wednesday June 16th)just five minutes before the bus left the station. We had been prepared as much as possible, running our luggage from Murdoch in Patsy's red sedan to Mary's house in Subiaco.
On the way through Perth, we ran into a general dragnet, where the police officers were pulling over two lanes of traffic into a side road parking lot, then administering the breatalizer to all the drivers. Not very unusual, unless you consider that this was on a wednesday at 11am.
In any case, through much little other than eating lunch, buying some more snorkel gear at the fish n' bait shop in Freo, and then taking the train to Mary's, we somehow ended up running through the damn bus station with our packs to meet the bus on time, some eight hours later.
My pack, sans big butt 'Australia' book and Watership Down, weighed in at 25kg. Caroline's a svelt 14kg.
Thursday, June 17th
CB
25C+ sunny, blue sky.
Coral Bay is a small town with a two caravan parks, a backpackers lodge, a resort hotel not unlike a Muskokan resort, with night time singer/entertainer on duty in the later evening. There is a bakery, two supermarkets, a Fids Cafe with two internet machines, a few shops for beach related jewellery, clothes, sports gear. A dive shop rounds out the list.
We arrived in town at 140pm; the landscape from Perth up to Coral was pretty much flat, with occasional very rounded hills, lots of brush, bush, grass, red sand, dried river beds, the occasional road house, and trucks of varied kinds, big wheels and gas cannisters strung to their tops, boats hitched behind.
CB is treeless, right on the coast, and exists entirely in conjunction with the Ningaloo reef.
That first day we took a spot in one of the caravan parks: $23 for a bare, unpowered, spot set under the sun, with the stump of a dead tree standing guard to one side. Everyone else there had a car, a tent or two, massive amounts of lights, grills, bottles of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, cans of food, glittering stainless steel pot sets, tables, chairs, eskies (coolers), table clothes... jesus. They had it all; we had the tent P+P lent me, a trangia stove I'd borrowed from Mary (and never cooked with), and two sleeping mats to kick back on.
Something right next to our site was the 'Adventure' site of Bayview Coral Bay Caravan Park had to offer for large groups. In today's case, a bus load of 9 year old school kids doing their thing.
The rest of the day, after pitching our tent and assessing the damage, was spent at the beach, swimming, and soaking in the rays.
Dinner was some sort of powedered curry, freeze dried peas, some chopped tomatoes picked up in a Carnarvon road house, two eggs, and a quarter advocado, with some toated brown bread.
We went to bed early, snacking on dried mango slices.
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