apelafas-blog - Tumblr blog

[apelafas-blog]

Beautiful beaches of Broome

[apelafas-blog]

Final Stop and Broome

After spending a couple days in Karijini it was time to head back to the coast over to Broome. It was so long of a trip that we had to stop on the way and we stayed in a hostel. We had been driving through the desert for hours and we pulled off onto the small gravel road…about a half mile away from the main road we pulled up onto a green grass field with a bunch of small little trailer looking houses. After sleeping in a tent for five nights this place was paradise. Beds with sheets, and the best part, air-conditioning!! Each room had two beds but I was luck enough to get my own for the night due to an odd number of people. We arrived around 3 PM so we had some time to spare. It kind of reminded me of a small little village but the only people that lived in the house were people who were staying the night or possibly living in the mine sites around the area. I went straight for the pool since I had been sweating on the bus and I found myself playing Marco Polo with a bunch of little kids who were probably ages 10 to 15. All of the girls were laying out on the chairs but once again I got very bored doing that so I asked the kiddos if they wanted to play. This night was our final dinner together and we ate steak, fish, rice and chicken with lots of vegetables, and finished it off with a beautiful cheesecake. It was an absolute beautiful night until… we were all doing dishes in a tiny little kitchen after dinner and we found ourselves starting to whip each other with towels, you know when you snap it like on someone? Well we were just being playful and having some fun, but of course me being the dumb kid that I am still I didn’t know how good I was at whipping a towel. I ended up hitting a girl from the UK on the knuckle, and when it hit it sounded like a gunshot or a piece of wood snapping really fast. I thought to myself oh crap, as she said Oww that hurt and then looked at her finger.. about 30 seconds later her ring finger knuckle swelled up and it looks like there was a tiny grape sitting under the skin on her knuckle. It was instantly blue and she looked right at it and said I think I’m going to get sick. She sat down on the couch and started sweating, and so did I. Here we were on the last night of the trip, A beautiful dinner, and then I do this to her? Really Aric? I am so thankful that after about five minutes the swelling went immediately down and she started feeling better after putting ice on it. I felt absolutely terrible and I was sitting by her side because I thought I broke this girls finger on the last day of the trip, what a finish. We ended the night by listening to music and talking until we had to go to bed because it was another early morning to hop on the bus to get to our final destination.

We arrived to Broome The next day and made a quick stop at two beaches before departing from each other and heading off to whichever hostel we had booked for the night in town. At this moment it was my final goodbye to some of the people I have met on the trip. In this blog I haven’t really talked about the relationships I made with people on this trip. All I have to say is I felt like we were a giant family by the end. I am really going to miss some of the people who I met on this trip. If you think about it I spent 10 days all day and all night with these people, so I got to know them pretty well. For the rest of us, we went out to dinner and went to a pub the first night in Broome. It was a nice meal and it was nice to spend even more time with the people I knew I would soon not see it again for a long time. Every night I spent in Broome I went to the beach with my friends and watched probably the most beautiful sunset over the water I have ever seen.

At this point it is Friday morning in my flight was booked for Sunday evening so I have the rest of the weekend to do whatever I wanted, but all I wanted to do was hang out with the friends I had met on the trip. I was staying in a different hostel then most of the people so we decided to meet up on the beach Friday morning. I would say I got really close with the three girls from the United Kingdom and the two German girls, because we were all about the same age and we had spent a lot of time together on the trip. These were the people I spent the final weekend with In Broome. That Friday morning we decided to walk down to a spot on the beach where you are supposed to be able to see dinosaur prints in the rocks. Well I didn’t realize how long of a trip it was and neither did the girls, we ended up walking 8 km to the spot we were trying to go to which took us two hours. At this point we were dehydrated and looking like crap and feeling like crap from the heat. We decided we wanted to check out town so we started heading that way. About halfway through we were all exhausted from the heat so I tried calling a taxi. They wouldn’t pick us up if we weren’t on a street corner so we walked another hour until we found a taxi that would pick us up. We then ate lunch together at a brewery and headed back to the hostel where the girls made a very delicious chicken curry. We ate dinner together and hung out for a while before all going to bed, Holly, one of the girls from the UK was leaving the next morning so we had brunch and said our goodbyes. :/

That night me, Daniel from Switzerland, and the girls went out to dinner and then saw a movie at an outdoor movie theater. It was very cool similar to a drive-in movie theater however they had a bunch of seats already sitting out or blankets laying in the grass you could lay on to watch the movie. 🎥

The following day was just a very relaxed day where we hung out on the beach and then laid by the pool until it was time to hop on the plane. Two of the girls were on the same flight back to Perth with me. We pretty much sat at the pool from 10 AM to 5 PM and just hung out and talked. When we arrived in Perth and it was time to go I was very sad saying my final goodbyes to my friends I had just made. Telling them hopefully I will see you again one day was sad, but inspires me to get out and keep traveling so I can meet more cool people like them or see them again someday.

Finally, all I can say is I will really miss the people I met on the trip and it was probably the coolest experience I have ever had… traveling through Australia by myself turned into traveling through Australia with a family .

[apelafas-blog]

Loved it at Karijini

[apelafas-blog]

Some gorges, waterholes, and my typical lunch on the trip.

[apelafas-blog]

Our camp site at Karijini.

[apelafas-blog]

Heading through the gorges! 1st day at Karijini

[apelafas-blog]

Coolest Place on Earth? 🌏 Day 7 & 8

Today we journeyed through the gorges of Karijini National Park. With in these gorges you can find water holes and waterfalls with the clearest freshwater you could think of. The first place we went to was an easy hike and very accessible to most people. It was fairly busy but we still enjoyed the moment. We went to dales gorge and circular pool, also making a trip to the fern pool which was right next to it. I decided to head to the fern the pool first because it was further into the gorge and then I would make my way back to the waterhole at dales gorge because we were given time on our own this day to choose where we wanted to go. When I arrived to the fern pool everyone kept pointing up into a tree that was hanging over the spot everyone was getting in the water. Hanging out in the tree was a python trying to catch some food. I was more amused with the food the python was trying to catch. In the tree were hundreds of bats, but I'm not talking about the tiny little bats we have back in central Illinois, I'm talking about a very large bag with a bout a 2 foot wingspan. 🦇 <-- (looked like that)This is like something you would see on TV or National Geographic. When they were jumped out of the tree and fly around my eyes grew large because I did not believe the size of the bat I was looking at. It looked to me like a teacup pig with wings ha ha. Even though a snake and bats were hanging around the water, the water was crystal clear and if you swim about 30 m you could sit under a waterfall, so I hopped right in. Underneath the waterfall was beautiful green moss and plants growing everywhere and it was awesome because everything was natural. I hung out under the waterfall with some random people and then took a dive off the cliff into the water and swim back to shore to check out the next water hole. On my way to the next waterhole I had a great conversation with a random guy about fitness and bodybuilding and the beautiful gorges of Australia. We then split when I made it to the next waterhole as I went straight for the water because I also saw my friends and tour guide in the clear water near the waterfall. We went for a swim and then laid out on the rocks around the water and basked in the sun like we were cold blooded reptiles. Nothing like soaking in those Australian rays. ☀️ After hanging out for a while we made our way to the next water hole which included hiking on a class four trail through the gorge. This consisted of climbing up the big rocks, climbing down ladders, down a very steep gorge, and crossing rivers. We had an elder Guy in the group who I was very happy to help get up a couple rocks because I did not want to see him miss out on what we were about to see next. Finally when we got to the bottom of the gorge there was another large beautiful water hole with rock surrounding it. I had been really craving doing a cliff dive from a high cliff into water. This had a jump that was about 7 to 10 feet into the water and that would have to do. Before I made that jump I just sat on the rock while water landed on my back and I looked up around me at all the beautiful red rock surrounding the waterhole. Yet another moment where I couldn't believe I was actually in the depths of Australia. After a good night of rest it was time to take on some serious gorges the next day. When we got on the bus in the morning we saw some clouds, which is not a good thing because rain means you have to evacuate the gorge immediately because of flash flood's. Instead of rain we just had overcast the entire day which was great because it kept the very hot sun away from us. I will go in depth about each gorge, but we were the first group in over a year who experienced three gorges in one day, our tour guide told us. Couple people in the group stayed back because they didn't think they would be able to make it down some of the rocks or through some of the gorges, I think that was a good idea because these were very difficult and very dangerous, but so worth it in the end. The first gorge we went to on this day we walked down to the very bottom and our tour guide told us it's time to get wet. People didn't understand that we would be walking through waist deep water on this first gorge. When he entered the water and no one followed I decided to be the first to go in. Being the curious and courageous individual I sometimes am, I walked straight into the water until it was waist deep while I still had my backpack on because I had my go Pro camera in it to take videos. After walking about 30 yards and waist deep water and shimmying on the side of the gorge through water that would have been chest deep if I kept walking in it, we made it to the other side to some flat land so we could keep going on our adventure to the waterhole. When I got to the other side I checked my backpack to make sure my go Pro camera waterproof case was on. What I forgot about was my wallet, my phone, my passport, and my canon expensive camera were in my bag as well. Luckily, they were barely wet at all and I had a garbage bag in my back pack. I immediately felt like an idiot for forgetting I had that stuff in my bag, but I wrapped it up in the garbage bag in was good to go the rest of the way. On our way to the waterhole we had to walk through more deep water and there was one tiny water hole where our tour guide had to fight off a very poisonous snake in the corner while the rest of us got through to the other side. When this was happening we were in a canyon like rock formation where rock was on both sides of us and we only had about 4 feet between each Rockwall, so it was like walking down a hallway of rock. After the water with the snake we arrive to the big water hole and our final destination, but to get to the waterhole you had to hold onto a railing and walk backwards through a waterfall to get down to dryland. This was so dangerous walking on wet slick rocks while only being able to hold onto a metal pole to get down to more slick rocks and slide over to the nearest dry rock so you have traction and can walk. Once we got there it was great we are at the bottom of the gorge with large rocks surrounding us a small little waterfall falling down into the water hole with beautiful clear water. While we were down in the hole a lady by herself was trying to calm down the rocks and slipped, but last-second got a hold of the metal pole. She decided to go back up and not come down and that was the last I saw of her. It was probably a good idea for her to not come down. After we spent our time in the waterhole it was time to go back up the wet rocks and head to our next gorge. Just after we made it back up the slick waterfall we saw three guys passing us who didn't really look like they were taking the gorge seriously. I was at the back of the group and everyone was heading back through the water where the snake was while I was at the back near the slick waterfall. One of the guys overestimated his ability to walk on what rocks and all I heard was "Thud thud" splash ... and a scream. The guy fell all the way down onto hard rocks and into the water, which was probably a 12 foot drop. Luckily he was just scraped up, he was so lucky he did not die right on the spot. Our next gorge was even cooler because we had to walk through more shoulder deep water, swim through the bottom of gorges where you had more hallways of rock on both side of you, and find your way through small tunnels of slick rocks to get to a beautiful water hole. Once we finally got there we hung out at the waterhole for about an hour. We were lucky that it was just us there and maybe two other people so we had time to relax because it is normally a busy spot. I just felt this was the coolest thing ever because you had to hold onto the side of the gorge while walking on tiny rocks fairly wide enough to fit your feet on them where if you slip, you can fall 5 to 10 feet into water or hard rocks. Also swimming through those gorges where the rock was on both sides of me was just amazing. It's so beautiful it's hard to explain or capture. After a quick lunch it was time to check out our third and final gorge of the day. This gorge was pretty easy to get down, and it had a very large watering hole with a very large waterfall down into it. It was a very relaxing spot in the water was pretty cool unlike the other places we had been. I really wish I could think of words to explain how beautiful this place was but it is hard. Imagine sitting at the bottom of a toilet bowl, but the toilet water is fresh water and the entire toilet bowl is the red rock as high as you can see, and then straight above you is blue sky with white clouds that look like cotton candy... simply amazing

[apelafas-blog]

Me ready to get off the bus, graffiti in the mining town, and a river at one of our pit stops.

[apelafas-blog]

The light house look out where we watched the sunset.

[apelafas-blog]

Turquoise Bay

[apelafas-blog]

Day 5&6 Snorkeling, Singing, & LOTS of Driving

Day 5 we woke up at the camp site and we're headed to Turquoise Bay in Exmouth, Western Australia. We were given free snorkel gear and we're allowed to hop in the bed and check out all of the reef and other creatures in the water. It was a very very hot day and unlike the ladies who wanted to lay out on the beach and get a tan, my white skin wasn't having it. I decided to snorkel the reef the entire time we were at the beach. This reef was just off the beach so you just walked out into the water and started to snorkel, unlike the reef I experienced before I went whale sharking in deeper waters. It was nice because the water was more calm and I could see lots of different kinds of fish including some rainbow looking fish some very colorful fish and even saw one stingray, but he got spooked from me and swam off fast. Lots of people did not want to snorkel because the more north you go on the West Coast the higher chance you have of getting stung by a jellyfish. Everyone was freaking out about a jellyfish call the eriganji. It is a very small translucent jellyfish that you cannot see and it is so small you would never see it before stung you. It also causes pain so bad that people are hospitalized from it. I could've laid on the beach all day and took no chances, but I swam in the water where I did see multiple jellyfish floating around me, however, it was very easy to avoid them because they aren't fast swimmers LOL We spent the majority of the afternoon at the beach, but we went back to the campsite so we could go to the grocery store to get food to prepare our meal for dinner. After the grocery store we went to the Vlamingh Head Lighthouse, which is one of the only places in Australia where you can see the sun both rise and set. We all sat on the ledge together and watch the sunset. It was another one of those moments where I realized how lucky I was and I was very happy at that moment in time. Once we got back we made another giant family dinner and had a feast. After the dinner it was round two with the fire pit. This time a couple more people stayed awake and for some reason we started doing sing-alongs. Where each person would Sing-a-Song they new or a song from their country. Our Japanese friend sing us a song and his language and it was very neat! I think I could see you every single star out in the sky, we were out in the outback of Australia so there wasn't much light. The following morning we got up pretty early because we were going to be on the bus the majority of the day driving to our next destination, Karijini National Park. We spent about 10 hours in the bus that day and I couldn't remember listening to music and sleeping the majority of the bus ride. We passed through a couple mining towns where our tour guide used to live because he went straight into morning after high school for a couple of years. These towns were isolated in the middle of nowhere and I would struggle to find myself to want to live in a place like that, however some people like it I guess. Finally that evening we arrived to The next campsite in the dark. It was also raining heavily and I am no raincoat or anything to protect me from the water. I quickly shoved all of my stuff into a tent and got underneath some cover. Then we got ready to prepare dinner. Luckily the rain stopped and it turned into a mist or light drizzle so we proceeded with making dinner because we had a couple big days ahead of us.

[apelafas-blog]

The camp site at Yardi Creek!

[apelafas-blog]

Stromatolites!!

[apelafas-blog]

Hanging with the pelicans while the dolphins eat lol 🐬

[apelafas-blog]

Day 3&4 swimming with sharks 🦈

Day 3 consisted on feeding dolphins, seeing some old rocks, and driving. We started off the day by going to a place called monkey mia dolphins. At this place a family of dolphins swims up to the shallow water, about knee deep. When they were there people could feed them fish. each dolphin would get about four fish and when the fish was gone they would dump a bucket of water into the ocean and the Dolphins knew this was the signal for no more food. They would then swim into deeper waters and wait for the next feeding. When they hear people walk into the water as a big group they know it is time for their next meal. The staff who ran this had to have a bucket behind all the people filled with fish that distracted the pelicans LOL because they wanted the fish too! After seeing the dolphins we drove to an area where we saw tons of rocks out of the water called stromatolites. These rock formations are some of the worlds oldest and largest living fossils, if you are a geology geek it's pretty cool. At this time we were still being attacked from flies like we were covered in garbage ( probably smelled like it from the heat). I started to notice a lot of people with nets around their entire head that tied off tight at the neck. These people were messing around with the flies ha ha After we left the rock formations we drove some more until we arrived at our hostel for the night. This was another large room with about 10 beds in it. The hostel provided food which was nice, and the whole crew sat and was watching some Australian football in the bar of the hostel. After dinner a lot of people were tired, but I knew I would only be on this trip once so once again I stayed awake with the Irish ladies. We decided to walk down the street to a pub where we found live music playing and it was great. The last song they played was Wonderwall and he did a pretty good job singing it I would say 👊🏼 when he finished singing we walked back to the hostel where I then found one guy from Sweden and the other guy from Japan who were on our trip hanging out looking for something to do. We decided to walk down to the beach at night time to see what it looked like. I would find by the end of the trip that these two guys would be some of my better friends, even though we had a very strong language barrier and my friend from Japan barely spoke any English. We were really good with hand gestures ha ha. We then got back to the hostel and went to bed because we were getting up pretty early the next morning to go snorkeling and searching for whale sharks, the biggest fish in the ocean. The next morning half of the group went whale sharking while the other half did things like snorkeling with the turtles and or just relaxing on the beach. I was about to find out that this might have been the most thrillseeking adrenaline junkie thing I have ever done. We suited up with our snorkel gear and our flippers and hopped on the boat. I found out that the two girls who would be our snorkel guides I had played ping-pong with the night before and they were pretty cool girls so I was excited for the trip. We started the trip off by heading out into the reef where we jumped straight into the water and just did snorkeling over lots of the Ningaloo Reef. This was my first time ever snorkeling and it was the coolest thing I think I've ever done. Being able to swim next to fish right over a coral reef was amazing. And the tour guide told us we were lucky and she had never experienced what was about to happen next.... about three minutes into the snorkel we saw a giant stingray about the size of two family pleaser Monicals pizza's playing in the sand. And about 30 m ahead in the reef we were swimming with four reef sharks. This is my first time swimming with something dangerous and the sharks looked like baby great whites or something to me ha ha. The scary part was she said they are normally that far into the reef which means there might have been something big out of the water… 🦈 After the snorkel with then were set on our trip to try and find a whale shark. It felt like we were in the boat forever waiting...and the waves kept getting rougher and rougher. The captain was in contact with a pilot who is flying over the waters over a 10 km span in an airplane Who is searching for a whale shark. It took us about three hours until we were told that they had spotted one and we would take the boat for 30 more minutes to find it. At this point half of our crew was extremely sea sick from the very choppy waves and people were throwing up all over the side of the boat or just laying down looking like they had the stomach flu.. my stomach felt a little weird, but luckily I've been on a roller coaster or two in my life and it didn't bother me, but watching my friends throw up all over the boat wasn't fun. Once we got to the area where the whale shark was the atmosphere just changed and everything seem to be very intense. The crew was split into two groups to get in the water and I was with the rest of the girls who I would be traveling with on my trip. The advice that we were given was once you get in the water the only thing that matters is when you see the shark swim to the left or to the right of it so you don't get hit by it straight on, seems easy right? Wrong. The very first jump we did into the water I was so nervous because I couldn't see the shark anywhere from the top before I got in and I had no idea where it was coming from or what to expect. I jumped in the water with about eight of my fellow travelers as we followed our guide about 30 feet from the boat. Remember the water was very choppy so it made things hard to see, I had my snorkel gear on but my head was above the water because I was trying to watch where my guide was taking us. The next thing I know she yells "SHARK" I put my head down immediately into the water, and I kid you not this enormous whale shark the size of a bus was swimming straight at me and was only about 20 feet away. My gut dropped and I was scared shitless as I stared at the thing coming straight at me like a deer in the headlights. I realized if I didn't move immediately my knee was going to hit it straight in the forehead head so I scrambled quickly to my left while the shark swim right past me. When it past me it was only about 10 feet away and the size of the shark made me feel like I was a minnow. Then I saw everyone chasing after it so I quickly swim after the shark and we followed behind it for about 100 feet, but he was swimming pretty fast and we were right behind him on his tail. Finally we stopped and waited for the boat to come pick us up to try and find him again. We then back onto the boat and sat down still breathing heavily because we just chased a shark through the ocean...I couldn't realize or take in what I had just done. The shark was about 7 m long or 21 feet to put things into perspective for you. It was an absolute tank and I stared it straight in the eyes from about 20 feet away. When we all got back into the boat we all looking at each other in shock and talking about how we all had no idea where it was coming from and how we all felt like we had to move right out of the way. Unfortunately, for some of the crew getting back on the boat meant they were immediately throwing up off the side again waiting to get back into the water. Two of the girls in my group were studs because they went from throwing up to putting their masks on and hopping in the water about 30 seconds after they threw up to go chase another shark. I had to give them some credit for that without throwing up in their snorkel gear LOL. We chased the shark four times and on the fourth and final time I had my closest encounter. The same thing happened as the first time I had hopped in the water, but this time I was looking around frantically trying to find him so I could be prepared and know where to get out of his way. But being the unlucky person I am, I had my back turned when he appeared out of nowhere and as I turned he was already 20 feet away. However, this time a girl was in front of me and so I didn't see him until he was so close I thought my knee was going to touch him. My stomach got really tight as I felt sick because I was afraid I was getting ready to kick this massive shark in the head. Our guides also had informed us we need to get out of the way and do not touch the shark because it will dive down deep and we won't be able to see it again. This all went through my mind very fast as the shark was quickly approaching. I surfaced to the water as fast as I could and got about 5 feet to the sharks right hand side before it went past me. This time I let everyone else chase the shark as I slowly just followed behind as all of these thoughts racing through my mind still I was trying to take in the fact that I almost once again had a head on collision with a whale shark. When we got back on the bus we had nothing but stories to tell to the rest of the crew. We were so excited that we saw a shark and we all thought it was the coolest thing we had ever seen. We then we're on our way to Yardi Creek. Where we would be camping the next two nights. We arrived at the campsite late at night so we had to find a tent and put everything in our tent in the dark. We then had spaghetti and sat around a campfire. At this point I decided I would stay up with whoever was awake every single night of the trip because you only get one opportunity sometimes in life and I wanted to hear as many stories and do as many cool things as possible. This night was very interesting because as we sat around the campfire I kept hearing a thumping noise out in the distance. I came to find out that I was hearing the noise of kangaroos hopping around in the dark. I found this funny because back home you hear coyotes howling at night time and where I was I could hear kangaroos hopping around with their buddies.

[apelafas-blog]

Shell Beach 🌊 🐚

[apelafas-blog]

The Gorge