An incredible couple of days, I hardly know where to begin. On Tuesday we had a ‘leisurely’ day, spending the morning walking on the beach and swimming in the beautiful ocean, perfect temperature and great rolling waves. Later on we went to a public memorial garden, in amongst which are wild kangaroos. So we knew we had arrived down under. Spent an hour sitting waiting for appropriate photo oops (see the Perth 2 folder on the blog page), before heading back and eating delicious fish parcels, cauliflower rice (I’m utterly converted) and salad. Polished a perfect day off with games requiring all our talents in sabotage, charading, drawing and describing. A wonderful day with very good friends.
If we thought that was a good day, Wednesday brought experiences galore, it’s exhausting just writing about it. Jane and Jon have a boat so the plan was to go to Rottnest Island, a former penal colony off the West coast. We set out from Fremantle, promised calm seas and a peaceful snorkel. I’ve never snorkelled and I’m not a confident swimmer, so I was feeling quite nervous and unsure, though I was also pleased and excited to be out of my comfort zone so early on in the holidays. The crossing turned out to be less than calm, with quite a swell and lots of bumps and bounces along the way. It was a weird feeling- I had absolute confidence in Jon as he’s such a calm guy, and indeed he did us proud. Taking us into a calmer bay, the engines suddenly went quiet and a very pissed off Jon came down from his higher platform to announce that the boat’s engine had got snagged on a cray pot rope. While we all sat helplessly watching, Jon went overboard and underwater to free the offending rope. I guess we were all thinking the same thing, so what if we can’t move? But of course he sorted it out and I just thought about the responsibility you take on when you do these things. Anyway, then came the snorkelling. So I haven’t done this before but I was determined to have a go, so I put on the mask and went in. I thought I’d got the knack, and remembered my daughters advice to keep calm and use yoga breathing and at first I thought I’d got it cracked so stupidly set off with the three men ahead of me. Anyway, along the way I had to keep stopping, once I got water in to my tubes I was hopeless. I did manage a few bouts of peaceful swimming seeing corals and fish, but missed the magnificent displays my fellow travelers were raving about afterwards. I felt proud of myself for giving it a go, annoyed I didn’t take a bit longer practising near the boat to give me confidence, and feeling that feeling of frustration when you can’t do what everyone else around can do. But hey, trips like this are all about challenge and I was more than ok with what I had achieved, despite the scrapes legs