In Exmouth, WA
Well, it's been a while, sorry guys. Internet so far after my last post has been both dial-up and expensive. We've finally come to a place where the connection is relatively cheap. (5 AUS$ for 1.25 hours) That's the best I've seen since Sydney. Things have been awesome here.After Perth, we travelled to Cervantes where the Pinnacles Desert is located. The Pinnacles are totally awesome. They are limestone formations that were left after rainfall leached lime from the sand and formed limestone. A calcite cap formed on top of the limestone. Then plants grew on top of the limestone and started sending roots down and widening cracks. Sand filled the cracks and gradually wind eroded away the sand, leaving the limestone with the cap exposed to the air and showing the pinnacles that are out there today. The red rock was completely amazing and I wish that people weren't complaining about the (cool) weather and having to use the bathroom. I would have loved to see the sunset there, we heard it was something to NOT miss (grrrrr). I did get to see kangaroo tracks and myself and Matt Scripter took off from the rest of the group to go see more. The whole desert looks like another planet.
After Cervantes we drove to Kalbarri and hiked through the National Park there. Kalbarri has this awesome gorge formed by the Murchison River and we hiked the 9 km trail that goes around one of the bluffs. That's about 7-8 miles according to Dr. Shenkers GPS. The river was kind of high and we had to crawl along the rock cliffs because the usual path was underwater. It was quite the adventure!!! We also did a marine portion in Kalbarri since the town is right on the coast of the Indian Ocean. There was a beautiful Rocky Inter-tidal coast and we went and waded around. Matt caught an octopus (take that Jamaican trip!!! we can catch them too!!!) and we all got to play with it.
We left Kalbarri and drove up to Monkey Mia (My-a) which has an absolutely BEAUTIFULL resort. We stopped on the way to see the really cool, yet slightly unexciting, stromatolites of Shark Bay and Hamelin Pool. It was a nice hike to see them at least and the water looked REALLY inviting. I wanted to swim, it was so clear. Monkey Mia is the second oldest running Dolphin research center. There are over 900 Pacific Bottlenose Dolphins that live in the Shark Bay area and about 4 of them are called Beach Dolphins. These dolphins have been fed by the people of Denham for a long time and a couple generations keep returning. In an effort to reduce the impact random and uncontrolled feeding would have on their behavior, only four dolphins are fed, they are adult females, receive only 1/5 of their total need and only the fish they would eat anyway. Otherwise they are encouraged to forage normally. We got to watch the dolphin feeding each morning and both times I saw it I was ALMOST picked. In fact, the people on either side of me were picked each time, but not me. Grrrr. Oh well, I got bumped by one of the dolphins :-) We also went snorkelling, sailing on a catamaran and night hiking looking for marsupials (A gondwanan distributed animal! :-)) The night hike was cool even when Kevin and Matt hid in the pitch black and jumped out at us.
Now we are in Exmouth, just arrived today (add 12 hours to the timestamp guys) and tomorrow we board our dive boat for three days of diving, including one day with the Whale Sharks!!! I'm so excited!!! Bye for now!
posted by Amy M @ 7:30 AM
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