Month: February 2018

We drove down to Margaret River on Monday afternoon and caught the sunset at Surfers Point. It’s an excellent surf spot, though unfortunately there weren’t any surfers in the water. But the sunset was lovely.

We’d developed a nice routine the last few days of hiking a bit in the morning before rewarding ourselves with lunch and afternoon wine tasting. Tuesday was another fine day of this. We returned to the Cape to Cape trail, this time parking and walking across the mouth of the Margaret River, which was just a big sand bar in the summer dry season. We soon came to my favorite section of the trail. The far point in this picture is Cape Mentelle.

We continued; this is looking back at Cape Mentelle from the north.

We came to some stairs that went down to the beach and shoreline.

There were plenty of rocks to climb on.

Back on the trail, we came upon a monitor lizard. Someone on Insta says it’s a Sand Goanna… He moved along to let us pass.

We had lunch at the recommended White Elephant Cafe. Great food in a beautiful setting.

Afternoon wine tasting included Voyager Estate with its lovely formal gardens. We also visited Leeuwin Estate winery and ran into Cam, our AirBnB host (along with Nadia). We didn’t even know he worked there.

We did another morning hike on our last day in Margaret River before driving on to Denmark.

Note the Cape to Cape trail sign in this one.

A (probably) local guy passed us on the trail, and he was stopped a couple of minutes later to point out this python. Thanks for the heads up! This guy slithered off after a couple of minutes; he was much longer than I would have guessed.

On the drive to Denmark, we stopped at Jewel cave. It’s a large (several kilometers long) cave discovered in the 50s. This is the largest “room”:

They call this “bacon”

Here are the “organ pipes”

And other fun stuff in a cave…

We continued south to the far southwestern “corner” of Australia and the meeting of the Southern and Indian oceans. It’s also the end of the Cape to Cape track with the Cape Leeuwin lighthouse.

After a couple of days in Perth, we took off on a road trip south down the coast. We spent two nights in Dunsborough, two nights in Margaret River, and two nights in Denmark before returning for a last night in Perth.

The first stop was at Lake Clifton to see thrombolites. The thrombolite building micro-organisms resemble the earliest forms of life on earth. So, here’s a peek at the primordial ooze. You’re welcome!

From small to big, the next stop was the Busselton Jetty, the longest pier in the world at nearly two kilometers long.

After our first night in Dunsborough, we set out to see the start of the Cape to Cape walk. It’s a trail from Cape Naturaliste to Cape Leeuwin. It’s over 135km long and typically takes about six days to walk. We set out on the start of the track, a very well maintained section that’s a combination of pavement and boardwalks.

The scenery is stunning.

After 6km we came to our endpoint for the day: Sugarloaf rock.

After our walk, we grabbed an excellent late lunch at Wise, a beautiful winery with an ocean view. The post-lunch tasting included a Zin with the highest ABV we’ve every seen for a wine. (It was… not very good. Very raisiny and as you might imagine, super hot on the alcohol. But plenty of their other offerings were good.)

We visited a few wineries in the afternoon, had dinner in Dunsborough, and enjoyed some wine with our AirBnB hosts, Simon and Melissa. Their place is just off the third fairway of Dunsborough Lakes Golf Course, and as you might guess, Simon is a golfer. We got up early on Monday to get in 9 holes before he left for work at Clairault Streicker winery.

We were off to Canal Rocks, a bit further south down the coast. Really fun to climb in and around. I wish I’d brought a mask and snorkel.

We drove a bit further south, hiked a bit more, and enjoyed another incredible beach with waves crashing on some rocks just off shore.

After all that work, we headed to Clairault Streicker for lunch. Simon then hosted our tasting.

On the drive down to Margaret River that afternoon, we enjoyed one more tasting at Amelia Park wines. Wonderful wine, and not a bad view from the “office” window.

As we do in most cities, we spent our first day in Perth walking the city. Leena blew out her flip flop (after ~7 years; nice job, Nike) getting off the plane as we arrived in Perth, so we started by heading to a Nike store in the downtown core of Perth. They’d never seen a “Retired” Nike badge like mine and gave a discount on a new pair of flip flops for Leena. We continued to Kings Park and climbed quite a hill to get to the top of the park.

The view back to central Perth:

The view towards the ocean:

Now starring Leena!

We walked through the park ready for a late lunch (and some water). Unfortunately, not knowing the city, we ended up in a university area. We walked on and came upon a large hospital campus. (Both of these areas have food for sure, but likely in student/employee cafeterias.) We finally found a nice cafe and got our order in just before they closed the kitchen. That was a delicious burger!

We grabbed a bus out to Cottesloe Beach and I took a dip in the Pacific. The water was, of course, chillier than Bali, but not too cold. We caught a train back to Perth and grabbed some Mexican near our AirBnB for dinner. We got “home” about 9p and our host Neil treated us to a glass of wine on his lovely back patio. He gave us great information in planning the next day: Rottnest Island.

We caught a train to Fremantle in the morning and had just enough time to buy tickets and board the 11a ferry to Rottnest Island. It’s an island about 20km off the coast. We bought tickets to a hop on/hop off bus that circuits the island all day. We hopped off many times for walks and beaches and amazing scenery.

Rottnest Island gets its name from the Dutch Rotte Nest (rat nest). It seems Captain Willem de Vlamingh mistook the native quokkas for giant rats. We found a nice family – I didn’t even notice the baby (lower right) until I looked at the picture later!

We caught a 5p ferry back to Fremantle and enjoyed the sunset at the beach.

We returned to Bali after our quick weekend in Singapore and headed to Nusa Dua to meet up with our friends Matt & Galina. It’s an area of beautiful beaches on the very southern tip of the island.

It’s also near Bali National Golf Club, and I headed out Monday afternoon for a round. It’s a very nice course, and was in good shape, though there were some flooded areas from very heavy rains the day before. I had hired clubs and hit the driver really well, finding 10 of 13 fairways (half is a good day for me normally) which was very helpful on a course with plenty of trouble beyond the margins. Unfortunately, with hired clubs, I don’t get the best fit and didn’t hit the irons well. Score could have been better but it was good fun to get out and hit a few.

The 6th was a lovely par 3 up the hill.

And the 17th had an island green (and construction on a new hotel in the background). Yep, I hit the green and made a par.

Back at the end of December, while in Seminyak, I did a 3-day SCUBA course and became PADI Open Water certified. Matt’s been certified for years, so we went to Tulamben (just north of Amed) on Tuesday and did two dives at the wreck of the US Liberty. (Leena and Galina enjoyed a beach day.) The USS Liberty was a troop transport ship that was damaged in WWII and scuttled on Bali when they realized they couldn’t make it to Jakarta for repairs. An earthquake (I’m guessing associated with an eruption) in the 60s tumbled the ship into the ocean. It’s a shore dive; the wreck is just 50 meters off shore. After 50 years in the water it’s got coral all over it and plenty of fish around it. We did some fun swim through passages on various parts of the wreck.

I added to my certification by doing a Deep Water Adventure dive on the first dive, going beyond the 18m I did in the Open Water course. We went close to 30m deep. I also dived on Nitrox, and completed my Enriched Air Certification.

We headed back to Ubud for a couple of nights to meet our friend Sandy. We caught a taxi to check out a temple called Elephant Cave. I had to don a sarong.

Our taxi.

The taxi driver talked us into a second stop: Tegenungen Waterfall.

From Ubud, we (including Sandy) headed to Sanur, another beachtown in the southeast of Bali.

After six weeks in Bali, we headed to Perth on the 31st of January.