Monkey Mia Part 2

Aussie phrase of the day: pulling the piss = teasing or giving a hard time, "I'm just pulling the piss, mate."

Every day begins with a healthy slathering of sunblock to all exposed areas of the body. Surprisingly everyone on the tour was very conscientious of wearing ample amounts of the gooey white stuff, thus encouraging me to do the same. Even if we were going to be cooped up for the better part of the day in the tour bus, everyone put it on, first thing in the morning. And so that was how we started day numero dos to Monkey Mia. I'm sure by now you are wondering if and when we are going to actually get to this desert oasis with the funny name. All in good time, my friends, all in good time. As our tour guide liked to remind us throughout this mini adventure, we were now on Western Australian time, that is that WA also stands for Wait Awhile.

First stop on this day's drive was the picturesque rocky coastline of WA and Nature's Bridge, another rock formed bridge similar to the one I saw in Albany, but not as close up or spectacular. Then it was on to Kalbarri National Park's Murchison Gorge, where we visited Nature's Window. We drove for miles across a rutted, sandy, washboard road before coming to our destination. The flies were out in force again, but this time everyone was protected with fly nets... except for two Chinese girls who complained the most out of everyone about the flies, but didn't want the fly nets because it would mess up their pictures. "Stupeed, girls!" The Belgian guy exclaimed in the best French accent I've ever heard. The Belgian managed to complain about most things, yet I liked him right away. He was everything you would expect of a typical Frenchmen, whiney and arrogant, always looking smug and displeased with a furrowed brow and curled lip, like he just smelled something really bad. He was always ready and willing to let you know what he thought, even if it was only to say, "Speak English, you Swiss Germans. So f-ing rude!" He would even tell off inanimate objects, like the window screen that fell out at the beach resort. Even his laugh was on the maniacal side and the way he pronounced kangaroo sounded like he was saying Congo. For a whole day I kept wondering why he was so excited about eating Congo meat... and what the hell was Congo meat anyway?

We arrived to the Nature's Window area, which reminded me of a much shallower version of the Grand Canyon, and trekked through the dusty, rocky terrain in flip flops and fly nets to see yet another natural rock wonder. As you can see in the photo, Nature's Window is a rock formation carefully situated on a clifftop overlooking a dried up river bed. Pretty exciting stuff, eh? It's pretty enough to take a picture, but as to whether anyone really cared how it got there, I doubt. It was a whole 10 minutes to walk to the rock structure, take a photo, and walk back to the picnic area on the summit where we started. Lunch was sandwiches which were to be prepared expeditiously before the flies could eat all the lunch meat, lettuce and tomatoes. Cleggy cleverly and strategically placed a piece of ham at the end of the picnic table to divert the flies away from the rest of the food for ease of the sandwich making process. Sure enough, within seconds, sixty or so flies had covered the piece of ham in a crawling black mass. As soon as your sandwich was made, you wrapped it in a brown paper bag - TO GO.

From there we drove for several more hours until we reached Shell Beach, which is exactly that, a beach made up of millions of tiny white shells, not a drop of sand could be found. The most amazing part of it was how far the beach extended. There was probably two-thirds of a mile of beach spreading out into the water. After a stroll across the shallow shell shorline and a few photos, we were on our way again. Finally, we arrived at the cozy and welcoming Monkey Mia Beach Resort just hours before a sunset that would be too beautiful to miss. We settled into the charming resort with hours to spare. We enjoyed a swim in the ocean, then watched as the sun settled over Shark Bay (photo). It was the first sunset we got to watch, but it wouldn't be the last. As evening quickly wrapped us in it's blanket of stars everyone was reluctant to leave the peacful beach. There are more stars in the southern skies over Australia than I have ever seen in any sky before. I could've fallen asleep right there on the beach watching the shooting stars while the warm ocean breeze blew over me, b t eventually I crept off to bed because the best part was yet to come...