Roadtrippin'

It was amazing, the places we've been and the scenery we've seen, absolutely gorgeous and sometimes even breathtaking. Driving around in the campervan was really cool as well. We started our trip in Perth, obviously. We drove almost every day and slept on free campsites. Sometimes next to the road on a parking campsite, sometimes on a campsite next to the beach and sometimes on parkingspots where it wasn't aloud to camp hahaa. We have been caught by a few rangers (sort of police, they make sure the national parks and towns are not full with illegal campervans full with backpackers like us! :P First day we went to the Pinnacles national Park. It's like a dessert area with all these pinnacles coming out of the ground, small, large and funny shapes. We were having lunch on top of our awesome van and started to play a game, like the one you do with the clouds. What do you see in this cloud or in this case Pinnacle?! And then we found this pinnacle and we just couldn't help it, we had to take these photo's. The next day we went to the sanddunes. The area where we were was full of sanddunes, everywhere you looked you saw these massive, white sanddunes. We went to play on a few of the dunes and we found a streetsign and used it as a snowboard, it didn't really work but it was fun anyway. We drove to a Pink Lake which was pretty cool, I've never seen a pink lake, or even knew it excisted for that matter. The further we got upnorth, the better the weather got. In Perth is was pretty cold sometimes, especially at night, but every day it got warmer and that was so nice. The first few nights in the campervan were pretty cold and it wasn't very nice to sit outside after sundown, so we went to bed early. I must say, I did rock socks in thongs(flipflops) this trip, I know I know, it's soooo 2014, but whatever it was colddd!!!!!!

Our next big thing in our trip was Kalbarri National Park. This was absolute on our to-do list and it was incredible. The day we arrived we started a short track along the coastline/cliffs and it was soooooooooo beautiful. Unfortunately, Kalbarri was where the fly-plague started. We weren't prepared for this, we heard about it, but we didn't expect it to be this bad. We had to run back to the van, because they were seriously attacking us, trying to fly in our mouths, eyes and nose. It was BAD! We went to the shop to buy flynets, you wear them on your head so the flies can't attack you so much. Very charming though, a sexy flynet on your head, but who cares! We camped on a campsite in the park, we had to pay for this one, but we got a warm shower for the first time in a week and that was absolutely worth it. We normally showered at the public showers, and they are COLD, reaallllyy cold, so we were happy with a warm shower. Haha you don't realize those things, you just take a hot shower for granted, so it makes you think about stuff like that. It was a good night, having dinner inside and finally being able so sit down and have a drink afterwards and chat without freezing and going to bed early. After a goodnight sleep we woke up early for the 9km track in the Kalbarri National Park. The track started with an amazing viewpoint, looking a little bit like the grand canyon, with the red rocks, very impressive. We climbed on top of rocks and played around. It was a very challenging track, 9km's doesn't sound too bad, but it was a lot of climbing up and down, walking in sand and climbing up again. We were sooo relieved when we made it to the end, tired but ready for a next day of adventures. We drove further north, to shark bay, one of the must-see places of the westcoast. Beautiful beaches, clear blue water and Monkey Mia, where you can sit on the beach and watch the dolphins play in the water. 

Next stop: Coral Bay. I went there last christmas with Sam, when I just arrived in Onslow. It was still very beautiful and we wanted to spend a few days there, but there were no free campsites, only very expensive campsites, so we decided to camp somewhere and wake up really early to move the van and pretend we just arrived. We had a good day and night, it was warm and the sunset was pretty, we had some drinks and a bbq. The next morning the alarm went of at 5am, to make sure the ranger wouldn't catch us free camping on a illegal spot. All went well and we had a nice spot next to the beach to watch the sunrise, we had breakfast on the beach and then shit went down. The ranger came and started yelling at James when he was alone, James was caught of guard and didn't know what to say. The ranger was telling him that he was calling the police and it was just one big drama, while I was still enjoying my breakfast and didn't know what was happening. James paid the guy and we left Coral Bay with a feeling of being criminals, but the only thing we did was camp haha, like all other backpackers travelling in campervans, but we should have known that we are kinda hard to miss with our unique hippie campervan haha.

We went to Exmouth after that. Exmouth is known for the amazing worldclass scubadiving and beaches. Unfortunately the best dive site was closed due to the cyclone a week earlier, so I decided not to spend $300 for 2 dives that aren't in the top 10 of the world. What a snob!! But you can get like 10 dives for that money in Asia, so I'm gonna save that money for next month. But the beaches and the snorkling were beautiful. Haven't seen a nice beach like that for a while (yeah yeah Onslow wasn't the best) We camped at Cape Range National Park for 4 nights, every night we stayed at a different campsite next to the beach and it was just perfect. We didn't do much those days, just beach, swimming, snorkling, chilling and barbies (bbq). Quite nice after two weeks of driving and hiking all the time. Chillaxtime. After Exmouth it was time for ONSLOW!!! Yaaayy we only went there for one night, because we didn't have much time left, but it was so good to be back! Seeing everyone again, having dinner and drinks with Nathan, Anni and Joe. It was friday night so it was busy at the pub and it was just like coming home. I still know it was the right dicision for me to leave, but it was also good to see that (don't ask me why) I really love that place. It was a pretty good night, with lots of friends and alcohol. My friend Lenny offered us to stay at his place for the night, so I finally slept in a real bed again. Sad to realize we had to leave early the next morning, after pancakes of course.

We had a 7hour drive ahead of us to the last destination of our roadtrip: Karijini National Park. That was a loooonnnggg drive but we made it, we camped at a campsite close to the park, so we could leave early in the morning to see and do as much as possible. We started with a short track to a waterfall and it was beautiful. There we're some natural pools where we jumped in and hung out underneath another waterfull. The other side of the park had some pretty great hikes and caves as well, but we saved them for our last day. And the last day was just perfect. The hikes were amazing, climbing on rocks and spidermaning between walls of rocks, following the little waterstream towards caves with natural pools. At the end of the day I drove James and Danielle to the busstation, where they would take the bus to broome. Our original plan was to drive up to Broome, but we didn't have enough time to go there and drive the car back to Perth. So they decided to take the bus to Broome and I drove the car back to Perth by myself. I had a great trip, got to see and do all the things I wanted to and made it back to Perth safely.