Day 6: Surfin' Surfin' in Oz

huuuum a good night of sleep, just in front of our surf spot. But now we know the best way to be woken up is by a ranger. Yes another fine for us! Again we weren't allowed to camp at this spot as it's part of a national park. And, as he told us, camping in national parks is strictly prohibited. He was still nice enough to give us only a $50 instead of the usual $500 fine...phew!

But those 50 bucks didn't change our plan to go surfing again! And that's what we did for the morning. But unfortunately it was a Saturday; the beach was crowded, there was a surf school, and too many people in general!

After some good waves and a few hours later we drove back to Margaret river for lunch. We needed a break, relax for a little while and wait until it wasn't as hot anymore before we could go back to the beach (these days are commonly the hottest in the year at the west coast).
Once there again, I (Bast) was the only to go surfing. Well, I shouldn't have done that. A few bruises later, while trying to dodge a body boarder I got hit by my own board right in the face. As a result I lost my beloved lip-piercing and now have a lip which has a deep cut and on top of that it's swollen...

I was done for the day.

We decided to look for a new place to sleep, but this time we chose the safest way and stayed at a camping park (12$ each for a spot for the night ...).

Day 5: The Perfect Beach

What a shit start into day 5! We stayed overnight at a car park in Margaret River, a town about 3 hours south of Perth. It was quite a nice spot, with a public toilet and power points (so we could actually use our computers), too. But it was too good to be true. In the morning a ranger woke us up and fined us for not staying at a camp site - 100 bucks! He also told us we were camping right in front of his office and and suggested to be a bit smarter next time :-)

But it got better. We went to Redgate Beach which turned out to be a nice and easy beach break - just what we were looking for. We went surfing straight away. We didn't even need a wet suit, a rashy and boardies perfectly did it for us (quite weird feeling for someone from northern Europe!).

We surfed for almost the whole day, until we were too exhausted and then started looking for a new car park to stay overnight at since the one from last night turned out to be a little too expensive. After driving around searching for a new spot we decided to just park at the car park of Redgate Beach. It was a good 20 minutes away from that ranger and his office and should therefore be safe. Moreover, we wouldn't have to drive the next morning and would be able to jump right into the water in the morning.

Day 4: Where's this F*****G Graal

South West Australia, surfing mecca ?

For advanced surfers, definitely. For us, it's more like an endless search for some easy beach breaks.

So far, nothing easy for us.

We left gracetown in the morning to check what's going on around, and there's a lot.

Every time we are amazed by what we see: beautiful beaches, big waves and BIG rocks.

But one thing is still missing, this one thing we're looking for, a freaking good spot for us !!!

And like 1 hour before dusk (in the south of Gracetown), after watching some kids surfing close to a beach, we went back to the van, took our boards to finaly after 10 min in the water, realised that these kids were surfing above rocks at maybe 50cm of depth. No we weren't scared (just a bit) we just didn't want to end in a hospital.

So we tried but that didn't count as surfing really ...

GAME OVER (for now)

It was time to go back to Margaret River, have dinner, play card games and then go to bed after a movie, exciting, huh?

What's waiting for us now ? You'll find out more in the next episode of "Wicked Road Trippin".

Day 3: Beach Life

Not much happened on day 3. We got up a little too late in order to watch the dolphins in Busselton which are coming into the sea port every morning looking for food. Bugger! Oh well, we'll try to check them out on our way back to Fremantle.

So we continued driving down the west coast searching for nice spots to surf. As we soon found out there's heaps of 'em! One beach better than the other (picture and map?). We stopped at Smith's beach in Yallingup, apparently one of the top spot on at the southern west coast. Unfortunately, there wasn't any waves. The water was as calm as it can possibly be. Going for a swim was fun, though...but it wasn't quite what we came for. When we went back to Yallingup a local surfer told us everything about the surfing conditions for the next week and where we should go as pros...errr...beginners. She told us the swell would soon pick up and that there are massive waves predicted for all along the coast on Thursday. She suggested Cowaramup Point at Gracetown for us for Thursday.

So this is where we went right before sunset. Gracetown Is a nice and very small town with nothing at all going on. The only store was the only gas station at the same time and of course closed up by the time we arrived (6.00pm). So we snuck into the local tennis club to get our much needed water and then went straight to the beach for dinner and sunset.

The sunset turned out to be another beautiful one. I don't know how many of those freakin' sunsets I've already taking pictures of, but this one was particularly nice! It was very romantic, too - major bummer, Bastien is a dude...So we put any upcoming romanticism quickly aside and went to sleep at 8.00 pm and not a single minute later. I'm not kidding you!


Hopefully there's gonna be some waves in the bay tomorrow so we can finally test our boards. The Spot we are at right now is a reef break --not easy for beginners-- but the local was saying it might work out for us.

Gute Nacht und bis Morgen!

Day 2: on the road

Day 2 didn't start as we planned it. First, we got up late (I did anyway but I'm blaming the goon) and when we wanted to check out of the hostel at 9.30am the entire staff wasn't around. Turns out one was still asleep (!) and
the other one was taking a shower. Highly ironic, as they like to charge you for another night if you don't check out by 10am.

We left anyway as we had to pick up our camper in Perth. When we arrived they were really surprised about our rental and hadn't prepared anything. It took us about 2 hours to sort everything out and to finally get a camper van (which doesn't have a name yet). The van is quite the jalopy! It's rusty, dented, it doesn't have neither a/c nor power steering - very basic. On top of that the meter is already at roughly 350,000km! Having said that, driving her is quite fun! It's kinda like driving a Volkswagen T3 :) And it'd better fun, because I found out only this morning that Bastien doesn't possess a drivers license, haha! Noice.

We then picked up our surfboards from a rental place and grabbed some groceries and at about 2pm we finally started our road trip! We went straight south to get to the beaches as quickly as possible. Unfortunately it didn't work out quite as smoothly as we had it in mind as we hadn't planned anything in advance. We didn't even have a proper map. So we decided to completely rely on the road signs. No good, I tell you! After spending ages in and around Perth trying to find the right way out we finally ended up on the right highway. But the complete lack of any street signs didn't help at all so that we got lost regularly.

On our way down south we passed Rockingham (great spot for kite surfers!) and Mandurah where we checked out the beach. At 7pm we stopped in Bunbury at a beautiful beach where we decided to stay overnight. We went for a quick swim right away which was real nice - the perfect way to finish a day like this one.

Ok, that's enough for today. My laptop is about to die :)

Tomorrow we'll try to hit the first real surf spot called Yallingup which is only about another 100km further down south. Hopefully there's gonna be a good surf tomorrow!

Au revoir a demain!

Day 1: preparations (under the influence of goon)

It was like any other day ... no, don't you even think it was boring for a second. we just had a casual day, waking up between nine and ten, having breakfast, playing cards (outside, 30 degs, sun shining) and then we had to figure out how to spend our day. Since we are staying in Fremantle, Western Australia at the moment we decided to just go to the beach! And so we did! You just can't get tired of that, there's so many great places to stay and so many nice beaches to explore. Even the night life is amazing and those gir... oh wait maybe i shouldnt say that, don't be too jealous, just come here ;)

In order to see as much as possible of the Australian west coast we decided to hire a camper van and to spend the next two weeks driving down the coast. so first thing we did was, we booked a wicked camper van yesterday (www.wickedcampervans.com.au). Today, we just had to hire our sufboards and wetsuits (which we did at South Beach, Fremantle).

Yes, we are going to spend the next 14 days on the road, south of Perth along the coast looking for the best surf spots and beaches. We will try to tell you how our road trip is going along and show you how awesome Australia's scenery is by posting our photos.

We don't even know yet if we'll have access to the internet at all, but we'll do our best to show you impressions of our road trip around the south west coast.

14 days 14 posts!