Day 4... Carnarvon
Okay so we started off with a very lazy morning but this also coincided with completing all the requirements for George to make him road worthy. George's name was also modified to George Aslan II (more regal I think) and despite what you may think on Tom's initiative alone his car also attained a name today: Claire (for the back story on Clair visit Tom's blog: http://t.co/aDcqc6b95n)
We got on the road about midday cruising along to the song "on the road again" very fitting I think...
George got adopted into the family extremely quickly. But the topic of sexuality (regarding Clair being the car and George being the trailer) did arise. As the dilemma arose because the connection between the two resulted Claire being inside of George??? the answer to this dilemma may one day be solved but for the moment we just ignored this fact.
We managed to entertained ourselves for the 6.5 hour trip up to exmouth by playing 'I spy' where both Zoë and myself intermittently managed to fall asleep on Toms goes, sneaking in guesses when we casually woke up just to check where about in the journey we were and whether Tom needed to swap drivers.
I was also informed by Zoë that if you say thank-you after you sneeze then it kills a fairy and that Toms aim by the end of the journey is to be able to fill the gas stove bottles up with unleaded petrol without spilling any. I'll keep you posted on this one! Personally I think this challenge maybe do-able, but, hey you never know! On the other hand the upside down curry challenge maybe another story. This challenge came about before this trip (between myself and tom) but I imagine it will be completed on this journey. I am really hoping he fails miserably at this one but I'll also keep you posted on the results of this challenge as well. No dates set as of yet...
Once in exmouth we swam in the 25m pool at the Ningaloo caravan park across the road from the Visitors Centre (only location for drinking water). We also found homemade gelato ice cream at the Pinocchio restaurant located on the camp grounds. I have come to realise that I am travelling with ice cream fenatics at one point in the trip when we were staying in the national park 100km out of Exmouth. We went on a restock trip to exmouth also known as an ice cream run which turned out to be a 2 hour round trip :p
I got the first ice cream paid for by tom due to the fact that I won the debate between whether bananas grow on trees or bushes...
Day 5, Exmouth
Tom went to pick up our temporary travel companions for 5 days; Sam and Will (Tom's very good friend from the UK). Zoe went for an early morning run. where I intended to have a swim and have the tents packed up by 8am.
... well I had a good sleep in til 7.30 and as I was about to go for a swim Tom arrived back so we quickly packed up the tents and despite having neither done I still managed a bit of a sleep in so a win for me...
We set off for the national park, where we would be completely self sufficient other than a bush toilet provided. we intended to get ice cream before we set off but shamefully the restaurant was open until 5pm. So a few sad faces and grumbly tummies... so for you ice cream fanatics out there just remember this very important fact!
We ended up staying at Lake Side Campsite in the Ningaloo National Park due to the fact that it had established tree to provide some shade for the 38+ degree days we knew we were going to endure. It was $10 a night and a one off $12 park entry fee for the car. This was the first of five days with no shower... the only smell that night was the delicious smell of Toms amazing curry!
We played cards against humanity at night with a few Ciders and White Russians. If you want an extremely awesome sociable, slightly rude card game, cards against humanity is the game for you. When I mean slightly rude the intent of the game is to be the most insulting person by completing a saying...
Day 6
Valentines day... I couldn't really sleep so I was up at 4am for a walk and swim. The tide was extremely low. The coral that had previously been completely covered earlier in the day, was now completely exposed above the water. The moon and sound of the waves was amazing at this time of morning, and the benifit was that I could sit on the beach and not have to worry about being burnt to a cinder. Because I was so far away from civilisation I could also view the milky way and today was a full moon and this wont happen again for another two years.
Today was the 2 hour round trip to exmouth for ice cream, but sadly it was closed and Tom and Zoe had to resort to conissour ice creams from the shops :(
Tom became inventive with the outsides layer of the tents creating shades that established the illusion of a plane crash camp set up... Well that's what I thought anyway. these turned out to be very effective shades.
Tom took me on a sunset beach walk for Valentines day. Very romantic and someone had already made a love heart out of stones on the beginning of the beach track :) If you don't already know I'm a complete sucker for romance...
But Zoe was missing as we had adopted her as a valentine. We had definitely become a very close knit surrogate family and it felt weird not to have her around for our walk. We had stated that Zoe had a werewolf boyfriend (because of course it was a full noon). But in the end she said that they had mutually broke things off because she was moving away when we leave back down the coast and it clearly would work.
We got back and cooked an awesome dinner, casually talked amongst ourselves and headed to bed with the intention of getting up early to go trekking at Yardie creek.
Day 7
This morning I woke up with a very painful foot, I had cut the sole of my foot on coral a few day prior. I had also been walking around in true camping style barefoot. This had compacted the cut with dirt. Tom performed surgery amputating just above the ankle... no really he cleaned it up and bandaged. Despite the horrible pain and my squirming it was all clean and bearable to trek on... thanks Tom for that!
Moral of the story always have reef shoes when walking on coral, clean any coral cuts asap as they tend to get infected and wear closed in shoes often because even if your not attempting to prevent dirt getting into a cut's you'll probably bruise your feet. Especially If you have baby feet like me, and they just burn for hours, which isn't nice when your trying to go to sleep.
We planned on trekking 2 routes at Yardie creek (located 40min drive south of lakeside). One trek was 30 min which turned out to be the trek into the reserve. this was a little disappointing and it took us 10 min to complete and the 40 min trek took us 2 hours but we meandered our way throught the stage 4 route seeking out all the wild life including turtles, fish, osprey, cockatoos, wild goats, lizards and flowers.
when we got back to camp mid-day we relaxed attempting to stay out of the sun as much as possible. We played shit head that night where Will and I had a stand off. We were the last two and kept swapping cards trying to get one up on the other. Trying to outsmart each-other to move a step closer to winning but in the end we mutually forfeited out of social curtsy as this had carried on for about 15 minutes and gone nowhere. We also played a few rounds of bullshit before meandering off to bed.
Day 8
We got up early this morning to fish at Yardie creek and again failed miserably :( but on a positive note I heard a beautiful rendition of bohemian rhapsody from Zoe and Tom and established that hiccups, farts and poo's together were shi-hart-ups.... I didn't even know that was possible combination!
We progressed onto snorkelling at Torquise bay where we had the privilege of seeing wild turtles, black tip shark, sea snakes and beautiful fish and coral.
We got back to camp where just after lunch I believe I was dehydrated and suffering a bit from heat stroke. Tom managed to cool me down enough by covered me in cold ice water. I also drank 2L of hydrolyte over the next 2 hours. I cooled enough to nap but decided to submerge myself in the ocean to try and reduce my core temperature. Later, I made a car trip with Tom to get ice cream and utilize the air-con to try to cool me from the inside out, it was actually a neat trick. I ended up cold which was a relief and felt back to normal... if that's possible.
I had consumed approximately 4-5L of water before lunch (which was actually as warm as tea), but clearly in this extreme heat it just wasn't enough. make sure to stay hydrated aiming for 8-10L a day.
We had a sundowner and handstands on the beach. Zoë cooked cookies (camp style) with various trial and errors ranging from a modified aluminium/ pot combine attempting to replicate and oven to the winner pan fried choc chip cookies. Tom's hair also managed to get double braids down the back.
Before any though of sleep were pondered... we literally sang all of the popular song from the 90's and 2000. this continued until midnight we either lulled our neighbouring campers to sleep or annoyed the hec out of them. Either way we went to bed knowing that we were having our first shower in four days...
Day 9...
We trekked Charles knife gorge an 8.2km walk 20min south of Exmouth on the East peninsular. We left the tailer at the caravan park as it was off road access. We headed off early and finished at the gorge around 11am to avoid the heat of the day. Will informed us that a 12 year old boy had passed away after completing the gorge walk because of the extreme heat almost exactly a year ago. So if you do plan on doing this walk set off as early as possible and take plenty of water.
We got back to the caravan park swam, showed and just generally chilled. We did laundry (definitely needed). We visited the local shops twice because it was so hot, we were tempted to curl up in the corner for a nap due to the welcoming air con or just crawl into the freeze for a little while.
We cooked dinner (when I mean we, I mean Zoe and Tom cooked and I facilitated through massage). We were all as knacked as knacked can be so we all headed of to bed rather early...
Day 10... Exmouth (Tuesday 18th Feb)
Today was literally a write off day but very very needed. We did what ever we wanted until ice cream o'clock (5 o'clock when Piccolo's opened). We visited the visitors centre to steal some air con for a couple of hours. The rest of the day was spent under fans in the common room of the Caravan park. It was literally 5pm when Zoe and Tom both woke me up for ice cream... I wasn't bothered as we had been counting down since 11am. We ended up sharing 1L between the three of us... And spent most of the evening relaxing in Pinocchio restaurant where we had dinner as well.
Au revoir till next time.
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