Southwestern Roadtrip Round 2

Y'all, one trip down south with Wiebke just wasn't enough, so last weekend we did another one. (Can I just reiterate, so that there's zero confusion, that I am SO HAPPY/LUCKY/GRATEFUL/PUMPED that I have made two lady friends here like Wiebke and Nat. The happiest/luckiest/gratefulest/pumpedest!)

After Road Trip One, Wiebke and I were pretty on the same page about travel style. But this one it felt like we spent the whole trip high fiving each other to celebrate one of us saying the exact thing that was in the other's brain. ie: "girl, screw coffee - let's just stay at the beach all morning" ie: "yo, man; screw the beach - I need some caffeine" ie: "caves are cool and all, but I'd rather pet sting rays at the beach". etc. Synchronous traveling for the win!

So anyway, we rolled out of town on Thursday morning with a plan to take in some more southwest coast and also to look for farm work for Wiebke so she can extend her visa for a second year. For all sorts of reasons that ended up being a cluster, but it didn't stop us from doing all sorts of cool shit (*stuff, sorry Mom!). One of Wiebke's friends from a crappy backpacker job she had doing door-to-door sales needed a ride down south, so we collected Leah from Fremantle Thursday morning before heading out of town. She's a sweet girl here on the same visa as us, but girlfriend is doing it at 18. So brave! We agreed that neither of us had our acts together enough circa 2008 to be able to move across the world and just do this visa thing. So anyway, Leah came along for the ride and we spent Thursday scooting around Margaret River connecting with various vineyard staffing companies in hopes of finding the girls some work. Not a whole lotta luck, but we wrapped things up in time for happy hour, enjoyed our babe of a waiter at dinner (Boris the Argentinean surfer bro), and took in some open mic music at the local tavern. All in a day's work.

Margaret River street art

I've been eating all the figs off the tree at home (and feeling slightly guilty about it) and this William Carlos Williams poem pops into my head whenever I eat them. And then it was written on a chalkboard outside of a book shop in Margaret River! Sometimes I think the universe is actually speaking directly to me. 

Next morning, Wiebke and I carried on and Leah stayed behind to keep looking for work. We meandered down the coast to Augusta on the southern tip of the peninsula that Margaret River is on and scoped out the Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse, walked along some stretches of the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen, and promised each other that if she works out this second year visa, we're going to walk the Cape to Cape track so we can take in ALL of the coastal beauty.

Art at Surfer's Beach near MR. Not gonna lie, I thought this was an actual person with INCREDIBLE posture for a solid 10 minutes while I was sitting at a nearby tide pool contemplating the crabs. 

Augusta beaches

Near the Cape to Cape track, but not actually part of it. 

Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse

Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse

Beach at the start of the Cape to Cape. Unreal beauty. 

After Augusta, we popped back north a teensy bit to check out Hamelin Bay. We figured we'd continue east, and the highway in that direction begins just outside Hamelin Bay so it made sense. Obviously we ended up going back and spending the night in Augusta instead, because why would we do things the simple way? But I digress.

Hamelin Bay is a nature reserve and beach where various species of rays nest and happily live without fear of fishing. We passed Jewel Cave on the way (one of those moments where our brains were in sync - caves are cool, stingrays are cooler), but found the beach with no problems. So I had seen photos of people just chilling with their footsies in the shallows with sting rays and eagle rays and obviously wanted to scope out whether that was a real thing. Y'all, it is SO REAL!

NB: I realize that these photos don't look like rays, they look like black blobs in the water. But some of these little critters had bigger wingspans than me, easily, and just cruised along trying to figure out if we were humans who wanted to feed them.

Lesson: rays are cool, and given the chance to pet them in some beautiful shallow waters along the beach, do it. But don't swim over them like Steve Irwin did and get killed in a freak accident.

We spent the night in Augusta and watched the sunset from, and did an early swim in, Flinders Bay. Y'all, what a gorgeous spot. I felt like I was inside my guilty pleasure movie (Adore, with Robin Wright and Naomi Watts; don't judge) because there was a cool swimming platform to bask upon.

Picnic dinner at Flinders Bay

There were lots of cute retirees who do the early morning bay swim who all wanted to chat with Wiebke and me about our travels, and to help connect us with farmers for her farm work, and who reminded us several times not to tell too many people about how gorgeous Augusta is because it will soon be overrun. I mean, they're not wrong.

We did a quick nip into the Ragged Robin cafe for tea/coffee and then began migrating eastward to Pemberton. Let me tell you, Pemberton is not cute when compared to Augusta or Margaret River or pretty much any of the coastal towns we visited. It's an old mill town, so there's these beautiful wooden clapboard homes everywhere, and the rain line cuts right through the middle of things, but it was seriously like being in a zombie movie. On a Saturday afternoon I expected people to be wandering around, but we only saw folks in the town bakery (where we tried award winning vegan pies) and in the tourist center. I did not want Wiebke to find farm work there, but we looked anyway. Fortunately (in my mind), we were unsuccessful. But successful in finding pies!

The strawberry flan was bomb

I'm out of steam so we're gonna make this a two-parter. Part one: complete!