West Coast Rules!

I got back to Perth 2 days ago after what was an amazing week trip up the West Coast of Australia.

We headed up to Kalbarri first, stopping to go sandboarding on the way, which as you can see i was rubbish at (we did start drinking on the bus at around 1pm - well can you think of a better way to get to know people?! It broke the ice considerably!) our next stop was Monkey Mia, where the dolphins come right onto the beach, it is sooo amazing i have some great video of it aswell. The next day we drove up to Coral Bay which is the start of the Ningaloo Reef, which is a beautiful fringing coral reef. There were sharks right up near the beach there it was amazing!

The highlight of this trip, however, was when we reached Exmouth, I went diving with Whalesharks!!!! It was ridiculously scary but so awesome, they're massive and have these huge mouths which is the first part of them you see. We swam with 3 different sharks, although in a comedy moment, I swam alongside the first one without even noticing it!!! I was looking in the wrong direction and was sooo upset that I hadn't seen it, now however I can see the amusing side of it - who could swim with the biggest fish in the sea and not see it?!?! I spotted the next one though (which really isn't hard to miss!!!) and it really was amazing. They're so graceful and calm, although when I saw the mouth the first time (which was coming straight at me) i shouted something into my snorkel which i don't think I can write on here! It was a proper adrenaline rush, different to skydiving but equally as cool.

On the way back down to Perth we stopped at a wildlife park and I held a snake and had a completely unexpected reaction - I was so terrified of this teeny baby snake I involuntarily cried and told them to get it off me! It genuinely surprised me how scared I was and it annoyed me too! how can I jump out of a plane, swim with a shark but not be able to hold a snake?!?! Maybe I do have limits after all....

I need to explain a couple of those pics too, the one of me in a throne is when we visited the Hutt River Province, which is acutally a separate country and has it's own prince, Prince Leonard, who is really old but a legend! He showed us around his country, stamped our passports and everything! It was so funny, look it up on the internet, it's like playing a game (especially the post office - which is also the government offices!!!) It was really cool.

The other photo is one of the best pictures I've ever taken, I'm planning to enter it into some competitions I think it's that good! It was taken at sunrise in Exmouth, just before we went diving with the sharks. I love the colours and the clouds, it was just amazing, and really funny that we had gotten up specifically to see the sunrise on 3 other mornings, but then the one where we could have a lie in (and only 3 of us saw) was the most spectacular. I just thought it was completely amazing.