Exmouth and Cape Range National Park

I love Exmouth. I arrived almost at sunset and the light was beautiful. It looked like a ghost town, nobody in the streets, and the landscape reminded me of the desert - ochre sand, dusty, empty space. I was told there was a restaurant with internet access, so finally I was able to check my emails and write these lines. I have willingly chosen, since I arrived in Australia, not to check any media online, I have no idea what's been going on in the world in the last few weeks.

 

You feel far from everything here. True, you could reach Perth from here in a couple of hours if you took a plane, but still the feeling here is that one is on the moon.

 

Near Exmouth there is another wonderful park, Cape Range National Park. You can choose between hiking in or over the gorges or going to one of the beaches for snorkeling - the Ningaloo Reef extends to this area (which apparently becomes very busy when the whale shark visits the reef). I did both and lazied on the Turquoise Bay beach. This was probably my last day on the beach in Australia, as tomorrow I'm driving approximately 700km inland to Karijini National Park, and then it'll be time to slowly start driving back to Perth, which is about 1400km (yes, one thousand four hundred km) from Karijini... My plan had been to return the car at a small airport near there in a town called Paraburdoo and fly to Perth, but since this option was ridiculously expensive - not the flight, but returning the car in Paraburdoo - I have no choice but to drive back to Perth.

 

Gorge, Cape Range National Park

 

Turquoise Bay, Cape Range National Park



I wasn't the only one lazying on the beach...

... but they always run away from me, snif!



For the moment I think I'll have some wine and enjoy the evening breeze after a day when the temperature was 36ºC (but very dry, so it's bearable). A word on alcohol: as in other Anglo-Saxon countries alcohol is viewed almost as a drug: you must be over 18 to buy it (like everywhere else, but here this is really enforced), they only sell it in "bottleshops" (which are often an annex to a supermarket; it's a place that only sells alcohol), you can't drink it in public places (or have to hide the bottle with a bag) and it is so highly taxed that it is very expensive, especially in restaurants. The latter often allow you to bring your own bottle ("BYO"). the outcome of all these strict measures, of this taboo, is of course (as in the US, Ireland, Britain, Canada,...) that everyone has a drinking problem and alcohol becomes not a natural element of social, and namely gastronomic life (as in Southern Europe), but something that people look for for its own sake - going out to get drunk seems to be a national hobby here, judging from what you see and hear.

 

Wow, pig ears for $2!