Marc & Nora ROUND THE WORLD 2005/2006 - Join us!

nora writes>

after a loooong trip (2 days) in roasting heat we arrived in tom price. we both were so thursty that we decided to have a drink in the local bar.

what an experience! tom price is a mining town so you can imagine the guys in the pub - rough as they can be!

the pub was a huge ugly hall with no interior design (what for? costs money and nobody gives a damn as all that counts is that the fridges are filled with heaps of beer!)

so i found myself as the ONLY female in this quite intimidating location surrounded by rough guys burping!
all i could hear is fucking this, fucking that, i have never heard as many f-words in such a short time as in this bar.

after one drink we drove to a free camp spot called RIP rest area.

it was only the next day when we woke up and had a look around at daylight when we found out what this place was like. there were bricks and stones all over with wishes and thoughts from relatives to their beloved deceased. (maybe we should have just used our common sense - RIP standing for Rest in Peace)

- SUCHBILD (fuer Moritz): Woran kannst du in diesem bild erkennen dass auch oesterreicher da waren? (schreib mir die richtige antwort ins gaestebuch und du bekommst einen preis)

having breakfast was 'fun' - we were surrounded by millions of flies and the probability that one gets into your mouth if you open it was very high. but how can you eat with a mouth shut?!

we then drove to karijini national park - the temperature reached mid 30 at 10am already.

at the visitor centre SURPRISE SURPRISE - we met paivi and jobo who decided to follow us. so we spent the next 2 days together!

everybody kept telling us how great and marvellous karijini was so our expectations were really high! people doted on the cold water pools and the nature...

...the roads were pretty bad so it took us ages with our van to get to the 1st pool which was 27kms away.

once we arrived we had to do a 1hour trek down to the pool. it had approx. 43`c and all our water supply in the car was boiling hot. when i say boiling hot i mean it. our water wasnt lukewarm or anything like that but felt like it came straight out of a kettle! Nice!

the trek down was quite tough so we were looking forward for some refreshment in the cold water! the pool was quite small and the water stagnant and it was quite warm as well!

what a disappointment! when 2 rangers arrived we asked them about the water temperature and they told us that during the last 2 weeks they have had a real heatwave so the water temperature increased quite a lot.

so all those people that have been to karijini 2-3 weeks ago had temperatures in the mid 30s and ice cold water. we had temperatures in the 40s and lukewarm water. never mind! it was still nice!

the only thing that none of us looked forward to was to climb the hill again - there was no shade and it was literally climbing up rocks. once we arrived up there we needed a cold pool again - or a cold beer.

the visitor centre is also the only place to get a cold drink within a 90km radius. unfortunately it is only open from 9am-4pm.

we thought we could get ice there for our esky (australian for cool box) but they dont have any ice in summer as they switch off the electricity over the night so everything would melt.

we therefore continued drinking our HOT water for the next 2 days!

it didnt really cool down at night so sleeping in the van was tough and very very sweaty. we also didnt want to keep the door open as karijini has many venomous spiders - we saw one during dinner - marc killed it, my god you should have seen its poisonous fang! it was huge!

all in all we visited 4 pools and the last 2 were great as they also had a waterfall! they were bigger and therefore cooler and we went there very early in the morning so the water was still fresh.

by the way - a really funny thing: paivi was scared when she couldnt see the bottom of the water and when the ranger told us that there are 2 types of serpents in this area who love the water:
1) python
2) death adder

it wasnt really reassuring for paivi to enter the pool. but when it has 45`c outside and you are desperate to cool down you ignore things like that... however whenever a fish touched her foot she freaked out!

the ranger told us that the serpents get into the water to cool their body down but they stay at the edges and dont swim into the middle of the pool. so the only thing you have to do is watch out for them when entering and leaving the pool.

--we are still alive and havent encountered any deadly snakes!

so that was karijini - to conclude it was a really beautiful place but due to the heat and the fact that there are no facilities to refresh yourself (no ice, no cold water, no showers) we only managed to stay 2 days!