Day 109 - Monkey Mia, the good the bad and the ugly

Hi folks, I've finally done it. Number 3 task list is now complete, I've been to Monkey Mia, and seen dolphins. And seriously, these dolphins were close and friendly, you could have touched them if the guides there didn't advise you against it.

So I had to get up early to do this, as they dolphins get their feeds at 7:30, but it gave me a chance to see a lovely sunrise. When I got there, 15 minutes early as usual, there was only about 20 people waiting around, but by the time the process started, there was about 200 people. Note: if you're going to do this, stand at the end of the steps, so when they open it up, you're the first to the water, otherwise you might be a little bit away from it, and I only mean 10 metres or so.

They have 3 feeding sessions there, and they're all within about an hour of the first one, so if you get a bad position in the first one, hang around and go to the next session. In the first session we only had 2 adult dolphins and a 3 year old, and in the second we had 6 all up. The young one was the best, it was swimming around doing all sorts of natural "tricks" whilst the parents just sat patiently, 1 metre away from us.

Oh, and who did I meet there, Kat, the girl I hiked with in Kalbarri. And what's more, she got chosen to feed a dolphin (see pic 3). The dolphins only get a little food each time, so only about 10 people get to feed them.

Anyway, I ramble on. After I'd finished at Monkey Mia, I headed up into the Francois Peron NP, as I'd been advised by a workmate, who we'll call Nick, that he'd had an even better experience there. Unfortunately, it was a 50km drive, all in seriously soft sand. I got to the 35km mark, before I got bogged for the first time. I managed to reverse my way out of that. 100 metres later, the same thing. At that time, I decided both my car and I weren't set up for this, so reversed about 500 metres until I could get to a spot to turn around. Unfortunately, with 100 metres to go, I got bogged seriously. There was no space between car and sand. I spent about 30 minutes digging the sand out, and just before I went to try getting out, another car came past and gave me a hand. It was quite fun being towed out, in reverse, when you're only about 3 metres apart, but we did it. At that time, he advised that I'd do better if my tyres were flat, but I'd had enough, do I drove out. I did flatten my tyres first.

So Nick, I didn't get to go to that spot of yours. Very dissappointing.

Anyway, I came back to Denham at that time, and decided to spend the arvo by the beach. I went for a swim, something I hadn't done in a while, oooh warm water, and that's when the bad weather came in.

So an up and down day.

But I'm on a fishing charter tomorrow, hoping to catch some snapper and mackeral.