Tuesday 1 November 2011

Day 4

Day 4     16/10/11              
12:30 pm

Well yesterday was another lovely day in Perth! Carly and I decided to venture on to one of the many beautiful beaches! It was a bit windy and chilly, but we decided to give it a go anyway! Dr. Happs picked us up at my place and off we went. He gave us a few suggestions of different beaches to go, since it was windy. We finally decided to stay at Scarborough, our original plan anyway. It was very crowded, which was good because there were more people our age there. 

The sand is very different here, more grainy and course than American beaches. It was still wonderful to be on the beach! The waves were also a lot bigger than around the Atlantic Ocean and the water was a lot clearer. It was beautiful, just a bit chilly! The beach was very active with many different kinds of people: young, old, teenagers, babies etc… Merrliee had informed me that Scarborough was more of a tourist beach, which is did seem as such. However, there seemed to be a few locals as well. Well we weren’t there too long when one of the lifeguards pulls up in his truck, looking frantic at the ocean. We are sitting right by the water and have not noticed anything unusual. Well the lifeguard, who is very attractive I might add, grabs his board and runs into the water. Not long after, another lifeguard runs down with his life preserve and into the water. We see the first guard go towards a group of girls. He takes one and puts her on his board. There is also a small rescue boat that takes one of the girls and an older man. The last guard that came in takes the last girl still in the water. They all come up to the shore, one of the girls is holding her stomach, one is crying. Two of them lay down in the sand and the guards put oxygen masks on them. By this time there are at least 5-8 guards around them. They ended up being ok, one laid down for a while with the oxygen mask on. It seems as if they may have gotten caught in a rip current and the man was trying to help them out. It is a good thing the lifeguards know what to look for because Carly and I had no idea anything was even wrong. Hazel and John did tell us the first day we were here that the current is very very strong in the Indian Ocean. Good thing the water is freezing because I don’t think we will be getting in until the temperature starts to warm up, especially after that! I do want to swim in the ocean really bad! I love the ocean and riding the waves, but now I am a little apprehensive about it after seeing what happened to those girls...

After that we just laid around on the beach, watching the different activities going on. There were a lot of people passing footballs and other types of sports balls. One popular water sport we noticed was kite surfing. It looked like a ton of fun, but also a lot of work because you have to hold onto the kite while riding the waves, to us it seemed a bit complicated. Maybe one day we will try it though! I am up for many new adventures while here. Being on the beach was very exciting! I absolutely love the beach and everything about it. One of the places that we have been thinking about going to is, Rottnest, an island off the coast of Perth. I believe it takes a few hours to get there and is a little expensive to travel there, but many people have said it is a must to see while in Perth. There also are no cars that drive on the island! I think that is really neat. You can rent bikes for the day and ride around the island, so neat! The other top place to see is Margaret River. They have wine tasting, cave tours, and other fun things to do there. Carly and I were thinking about taking a weekend trip there. So we have a few items on our list of must - do things already! Also, we want to go whale watching! They have a boat that is guaranteed to see whales or you get to go out again to make sure you see the whales. I think that sounds like a blast! I would love to do some kind of daring adventure, but I am not sure if there are many of those types of things close to Perth. They do have an area you can go to swim with sharks, but I believe it is pretty far, same with riding on camels. That is one of the only downsides to Perth, everything is far away. The other downside, it is really expensive to live in Perth. I have been told it is one of the top 5 most expensive places to live in! Kentucky isn't that expensive, especially compared to the living here. After a while, it started to get a lot colder so we decided to pack up and walk around to see the shops and maybe get something to eat. There weren’t any shops, but there were several places to eat. Something else I noticed is that there aren’t a lot of restrooms in places, they have more public restrooms and they don’t have mirrors, just a toilet and sink. Just interesting! We ended up walking around in a circle and came back to this fish and chips place to eat. We both had calamari and fries, it wasn’t badly priced- $10AUS and it was pretty good and a lot of food. While we were eating we had some interesting entertainment. There was a group of younger kids, couldn’t be more than 18, hanging around the beach and where we were eating. They were drinking, carrying around a case of beer and a bag of wine, smoking what looked like illegal things, and using very foul language. It was interesting. I had made a comment about wondering if that type of behavior is more laid back in Australia, not five minutes later, a police officer came by shooing them away. So I take it that is not allowed in public! However, the police officer didn't say anything to them, just waved them away. 

After eating, we took a walk back to the beach to watch the sunset. However, it was too cloudy to see anything, but still pretty! We had another guy (in his car) honk and yell something about being hot, so silly because clearly nothing more than being obnoxious is going to come from that! Boys are so silly, even Australian boys! Merrilee came and picked me up with her friend Emma. We went down to Fremantle to have dinner. I would have loved to eat because they were eating at this food market with lots of Asian food, cheap too! But I literally had just eaten. I ended up getting a Strawberry Smile smoothie. It was quite yummy! The food they got looked good as well! I only tried the seaweed and rice, almost like sushi, that Emma had gotten. It was good! It was very crowded there, lots of different types of people. It was a great place to people watch! I could have sat there forever!

We got home around 8:30/9 and I was exhausted and ready for bed! So I went up to bed when we got home and slept in until 7:30, went back to bed and didn’t get out of bed until 9:30 the next morning. I am wondering if this is where my jet lag was setting in or if I was just tired from the past few days of excitement and adventures!

Today (Sunday) has been more of a lazy day. When I finally got out of bed, I had an apple and Nutella then uploaded some pictures from yesterday, then took a shower and got ready for my day. Then made plans for later today, but we might postpone them to one day this week, ate lunch and now watching the New Zealand vs. Australia rugby game. It is very interesting. The New Zealand team did a weird cheer at the beginning. I guess it is part of their culture or part of the beginning of a game. But it is interesting, I like it. There are also a lot of attractive, muscular men! 

I also tried Veggimite! It is really different. I kinda like it though! It is nothing like Nutella though, it is much saltier. Definitely something to put on bread or something, not to be eaten alone. 

1 comment:

  1. Yay for trying Veggimite! I agree - ok for bread or crackers, but not alone. Glad you are enjoying your adventure!

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