traveldiary.stracke.us

If the title sounds like Lothar finally hit an accommodation, that he was happy with, he did. Even though we stayed at the backpacker lodge of the resort, it was nicer than some hotel rooms we have had. The good part was that they don’t believe budget travelers should pay too much, so we we were able to stay at a very reasonable price. We were supposed to share our bathroom with the room next door, but no one ever moved in, so we had our own ensuite, making hubby very happy.
Monkey Mia is located on a peninsula in the Shark Bay World Heritage area. It takes about 1.5 hrs, off the main road(which in Aussie country, isn’t too main) to get there. It is supposedly the only resort accommodation in Australia, located right on the beach. Aussies try to keep the beaches for everyone–not a bad idea. Miles of sandy wide beaches stretch on either side of the resort. There isn’t a beach chair or umbrella in sight. Must have something to do with keeping everything naturally, or we actually believe the Aussies like to rough it!

As the title says, the resort area is inhabited by wild Indian Ocean bottlenose dolphins, which come to feed every morning at the beach. The dolphins, only the females, (males are supposedly, too aggressive) are allowed to have 3 snacks of about 3 fish each day. These are fed to them by tourists, like me. As you might well guess, this is definitely not enough to sustain them, as a matter of fact, it is only about 1/4 of their daily need. The rest they must get in the usual way that dolphins fish, charging a prey at 40km per hr. We were told to be careful, when we were in the water, so not to get between a dolphin and his prey. Apparently they can knock you over.:shock: These creatures are such beautiful animals and are said to be very intelligent. They are actually being studied by a group of marine behaviorists from the US Georgetown Univ. and Canadian Univ. Not a bad life they have here!–the students, I mean!(It can get a bit isolated, though!) Besides observing the dolphins, we also had a few good snorkel sessions in the Indian Ocean. There really weren’t any corals here, but rather sea grasses and sand, which allowed us to observe many stingrays. They were of a white variety with translucent blue patches on their backs.
This Shark Bay area is one of the 4 true World Heritage sites within Australia. The others being the Great Barrier Reef, The Tasmanian Forest, and the Ayers Rock Area. We plan on hitting all four, but didn’t realize that before this weekend.:shock:
Another one of nature’s free tourist attractions here, are the magnificent sunsets over the Indian Ocean, behind palm trees.:grin: Since our room was facing west, we were able to appreciate them from our porch, sipping a glass of West Australian wine.
There was also a French speaking student group here from the Island of Reunion, who were on holiday, after learning English in Perth for 3 weeks. Their government realizes how important it is in todays world to have a working knowledge of English and thus subsidizes their learning in a country, where the language is actually spoken. Such foresight! Their chaperones, Australians, were really nice and seemed to have adopted us! At the end of their meals, they always offered us the leftovers. Don’t get me wrong, they were great leftovers! One night we had all the makings of a Salad Nicoise, only having to add the tuna, and the next morning we were given a breakfast of ham and eggs, we just had to add the coffee. They didn’t want to just waste the food. Lucky for us!

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 31st, 2005 at 5:58 am and is filed under Australia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.