Thursday
We left early in the morning on Thursday and arrived at Leewuin Valley Winery after about a three hour trip. The grounds were beautiful, and it was the best wine tasting I had ever had. The taste director took us through all of the different wines and told us how to get the most flavour out of them. The winery was also the site of some great group jumping pictures, which I'm sure will surface on facebook.
Friday
Now the action really starts. Friday morning we got up early and headed out to a treetop walk near the cabin where we were staying. Basically you followed a bridge and ended up high in the trees with a great vantage point of the valley and the surrounding area. Here is Lacey bravely walking near the top:
I know I'm probably boring you with pictures, because this is a blog and I'm supposed to be talking, but some things are too beautiful to be captured in words. You know what I'm talking about Andy Dufresne. After the beach we hit up a nice brewery for lunch, and had fun rolling down the amazingly steep hill that they had outside the building. It was a great place for sampling beer. I think they gave us about ten different kinds to try. Most of them weren't great, but the honey beer I tried was excellent.
If you look closely past the picnic tables there is a huge hill, and that is where we had our rolling competition. I smashed my head on a metal lid while rolling down the hill (no, I'm not sure how it happened either, I guess I probably should have moved the metal object out of my path).
And Friday is still going! These days were so action packed. Before it got dark we drove over to one of the trees that used to be a fire lookout and climbed it! Definitely not legal in America, because there were no harnesses or supervision, just a ladded. Here is a picture to get an idea of what happened.
I made this really large so that you could see the rungs that we had to climb up. There was a cage around the ladder, so it was kind of safe, but still dangerous. Everyone in the group made it to the top! Will power/peer pressure works miracles.
Don't worry, after this we went back to the cabin, had a great dinner, talked, and went to bed. So Friday was finally over, and I, probably like you reading this, was exhausted.
Saturday
The trip is still going! We climbed a similar tree in the morning before traveling to Jewel Cave. Basically, this cave was discovered only 50 years ago, and it was gigantic! Think of a airplane hangar, or something of that size, and that was about the size of the cave. There were a bunch of great stone formation to see, stalactices and stalagmites and all of that jazz, but my favorite were these things that looked like trees (you just have to have good eyes. My camera and the dark don't mix):
Then is was straight off to the point where two oceans meet! The Indian and the Souther ocean meet at a point along the Souther coast of Australia, and that is exactly where we were headed. About this time my camera ran out of batteries, so I can't regail you with too many pictures, but I managed to take some anyway =)
Can you tell where the two oceans meet? If you can, bonus points. That's the Indian on the right half and the Southern on the left. That night we stopped by a beach to watch the sunset, and ended up seeing sting rays feeding near the shore! But my camera was dead. Oh well, they were awesome =)
Poop
After that, we went to lookout point in the mountains where I saw more stars than I had ever seen before. I didn't even know that there were that many stars in the sky. Seriously, I saw things that I had never seen before in the sky, and the beauty was astounding.
Getting back into the bus, Megan noticed that she had poop on her shoe. I looked at my shoe, and I had poop on the bottom! As Tom turned on the bus lights, we saw some left-over toilet paper strewn on the ground near where the group was standing looking at the starts. We didn't see it simply because while star gazing complete darkness is the key to seeing things. All in all, 4 of us were attacked by the human feces monster. From then on we became known as the poop troop, or the shit squad. Whatever name you want to refer to us, it was a pretty hilarious night. We threw our shoes in a garbage bag and cleaned them after getting back to the hostel. Everything was fine, and the shoes are clean now, but I don't know if they/I will ever be the same.
Sunday
On Sunday we celebrated Nic's birthday and then made our way back north to Fremantle. On the way, my second favorite part of the trip happened. Tom Gannon and I went body surfing in the Southern Ocean. If you have never body surfed, basically you swim out in to an area with big waves, and the attempt to swim with them as they crash toward the shore throwing you around like a rag doll. It was so much fun! Waves are sooooo strong. For instance, once I was trying to just walk from the beach out into the water. All of a sudden, a huge wave crashed down, and I tried to crouch to avoid the onrushing wall of force. It engulfed me, picked me up off my feet and flipped me 360 degrees in the water. I landed down on my feet somehow, and couldn't believe what had just happened. Mother nature is crazy.
Anyway, that about ends the tales of me down in the South of Australia. It was an amazing time, and I'm sorry that I'm not telling about it until about two weeks later. I also have a long story about Broome and the outback coming, but for now, enjoy all of the pictures and thanks for taking the time to read. Love you all =)
