Day 8 of the Western Australian adventure: Cervantes

So, we awoke on our second-to-last day in WA at our lovely little cabin, made lunch and breakfast and hit the road. On the way into Cervantes we took a slight detour, well, about a 3 hour detour so 'slight' by Australia standards, to go to Kalbarri National Park to see Nature's Window. Nature's Window is basically a whole in a rock caused by many years of erosion, which you can look through onto the Valley below it. It's quite spectacular, and it needed to be; without it, Kalbarri would not even be on the map.

We got back into the car and started the long drive to Cervantes and again had to contend with the Australian wildlife which seems to have an odd draw towards the road. At one stage Lucia had to slam on the brakes to avoid taking out an emu which was just leisurely strolling across the road.

We arrived in Cervantes and checked into our hostel which we had chosen because it had won lots of awards, and it didn't disappoint. It was the nicest, cleanest and most welcoming hostel we'd been to. The only issue was Kyle the Candian, and he was an issue. As soon as we'd checked in at reception, Kyle was bothering us for a lift to the Pinnacles that night. The Pinnacles are thousands of, slightly freaky, sandstone pillars ranging between 5 and 12 feet high. Again, these are quite the natural phenomenon and have generated a whole localised tourist industry.

The idea is to gather there around sun set with your picnic, champagne, your camera and your intrusive Canadian friend and spend hours walking around looking for the best shot of the sunset. Below is my effort, I hope you like it.

After we dropped Kyle back at the hostel, we went to the local country club for the seafood platter. This had a big local lobster and the standard other seafood trimmings, but to be honest, it reminded me why I don't particularly like seafood. Lucia, of course, loved it. When we got home we cracked out the 1985 version of Australian trivial pursuit, which lasted all of about 5 minutes, before we realised we knew nothing and went to bed to watch Valkyrie. Valkyrie is, on reflection, every bit as bad as you would expect from a film where Tom Cruise plays Hitler's assassin...