Destination: Pink Lake

My last blog ended somewhere between the stars and the cold lol .. but fortunately to all sunsets there are sunrises to follow and we saw this one surrounded by giant limestone rocks that made shadows that streaked across the desert.  You could see the sunlight light up the desert like a line scanning across the desert floor.  It was awesome !

The shadows if the pinnacles

We then headed north again to hit Pink Lake (a lake with a pink hue due to a naturally occurring beta carotene) passing by a few cities on the way to have some fresh rock lobster and take some magnificent pictures :)

The pinnacles desert regional park

We saw sooo many kangaroos at night !

A picture of the side of the Indian ocean road, it wasn't always like this but you can see patches of sand dunes

A lot of farming along the highway once you are about 2 hrs north of perth

Me in front of the coral coast

Pink Lake!!!! Destination reached .. now time to hightail it back to Perth to catch our flight :)

What most of the highway looked like :)

Till the next update!
:)

WA roadtrip ! Where the ocean meets the sky, I'll be sailing !

Once we pickup our car from the rental agency we headed off with map in hand and adventure on the horizon :)

We basically picked up a tourist magazine / brochure for the western coast of australia and stopped at every spot that looked interesting :) We make pitstops all along the coast for and eventually stopped for the night in a 600 person town called Cervantes and slept in a national park called the Pinnacles where we watched the stars, which we're simply no describable .. there were millions of them and the brightest thing around us was the moon which was 1/10 full and acted like a giant street light in the dark sky.  Once the moon dissapeared (around 2 oclock) the sky was absolutely magnificent .. I could actually see the milky way (clouds of stars streaking across the sky)

Me and Rog in front of the WA coast at one of many beautiful stops

A pier where people were fishing for Whitie (i guess a type of fish lol)

The first major stop was at a town known for its sand surfing just 1 hour out of perth.  It was like a movie, huge mountains of sand and lots of people on dirt bikes and quad bikes driving around the mountains.

Me, a sandsurf board and our beloved hyundai i30

the view from the top of the sand dunes

What looks like the desert, but only a few kms from the beach

Sand surfing!

the climb

quadbikes tearing it up

exhausted from climbing the dunes

After surfing we hit the road again headed for a small town called Cervantes to eat and sleep the night.  we found a beautiful national park with limestone rocks protruding from the ground and drove around there while watching the stars.  The night in the desert gets cold around 9 degrees celcius so falling asleep and missing the stars wasn't an issue because we would get up every two hours to turn the car on anyways :)

Till the next update!
:)

Western Australia!!!!

I will split the blog about WA into three spanning the three days we spent traveling Perth and the western coast :)

We landed in Perth at around midnight, took a cab straight to our hotel dropped off our bags and spent the next 4 hours walking around the city area and seeing the nightlife.  The next morning we woke up and headed out to find a way to the outback! as this was the main reason for going to WA :)

The first travel agent we stopped at (called travel forever) gave us a great deal on a rental car with unlimited number of kms ! So we booked it and spent the rest of the first day seeing perth city and fremantle (a smaller city closer to the Indian ocean) which has some exceptional italian food (surprisingly the largest migrants after the British and the Italians in WA)

City skyline

Perth towards the evening

Risotto with seafood (no where near as good as momma's but good considering we were in Oz)

After dinner we saw the hangover 2 and went to the casino to try out our luck (we lost 10$ each lol)

Till the next update!
:)

Noosa!

Along our exchange we have met a varied group of people from all over the world :) One of our friends Tobi (from Deutschland) will be staying in Oz after his exchange with his girlfriend to travel so he purchased a camper van. Its typical australian to buy a camper van filled with travelling stuff like fold away chairs and portable grills lol

We took the van up the coast of queensland till Noosa Heads (a beach area about 2 hours north of Brisbane)  We stopped along the way like real backpackers at every beach or beautiful lookout and slept the night in the van in the parking lot of the lookout point called arkwright lookout.  There we woke up in the morning to see the sunrise before continuing our journey around Noosa :)

Along the weekend we stopped at garage sales, looked for koalas and turtles in the wild and hiked up and down the mountains

The view from the top of mount beerburum

Our first garage sale :)

Point arkwright

The view of the beach from point arkwright

Dinner clean-up :)

The van!! :)

The sunrise :)

My new desktop background

ART

An crazy adventurer on a rock

There are tons more pictures but I can show you all when I get back to MTL :) ps so far I've taken over 6000 pictures and videos !

Till the next update !
:)

Stradebroke Island :)

So its been a while since I blogged .. I have been super busy with end of semester and enjoying every minute of whats left of an amazing exchange :)

Today we had a cleaning inspection (which we passed with flying colors) and yesterday we got back from perth (which I will write about in my next blogs)

So a couple of weeks ago we went to an Island called Stradebroke island right off the coast of Brisbane :)

it started off as a rainy day but got nicer once we got to the island but that meant there was no one there .. the beach was completely desert and we had kilometers of sand and water to ourselves :)  the weather was nice but not exactly swimming weather but we did get our feet wet :)

A gorge near the main beach

Roger and Dave racing off into the distance

Looking towards the lookout point

Our tent :)

Dave drawing in the sand :)

It was amazing to have an entire beach to ourselves with nothing else around .. there was no city near the beach.  Closest thing was 10 minute walk and was a little cafe and a bus stop.

Till the next update!
:)