Back in OZ!!

I'm back in Australia!!! Whoooooo!!

Okay, just had to get that out of the way. I'm so excited to be back after 4 years away (can't believe it's been that long, but I've been to Madagascar, South Africa, and Swaziland in the meantime, so things could be a lot worse). I'm bringing back the "Austra-log" for this trip, for old times sake...If you missed the news on Madagascar, check out the "Epic Ecological Adventures" blog of yore (http://annimalfox.blogspot.com/). Also, if you're wondering why I never posted anything from southern Africa, it's because I'm still under contract with the National Geographic Society to share my photos and video, and I can't publish any of the photos until I wrap that up (hopefully, they'll be publishing something official for me).

Anyway, I landed in Perth on Thursday evening, a few weeks early for the 12th International Mammalogical Congress, happening in early July. I had to squeeze in a few weeks of travel and catching up with friends if I was going to travel halfway around the world!

Here's a nice sunset leaving Florida (I'm taking advantage of my new iPhone to take some pics when it's easier than using a nice camera, though I brought those as well, of course)

The flight from LA to Brisbane was nice and long (just how I like it) and I watched some fun Aussie/NZ movies ("Emo the Musical" was hilarious, in that kind of awkward "Castle" or "Summer Heights High" way, and then "Pork Pie" was a strange road-trip movie through New Zealand that had lots of silly moments too).

I tried to spot the epic Brisbane bridges as we flew up to Perth, but no such luck...

(Side note: I'm going to completely circumnavigate the globe on this trip, for the first time ever, since my flight out went west, from Florida to LA to Brisbane to Perth - yes, it was a lot of flights! - but then my flight back will continue west to Abu Dhabi and then to New York, so I can catch a wedding before flying back down to Florida. Pretty easy, I'm no Magellan).

I had a lovely several hours of waiting in the middle of an office courtyard thing near the train station as I tried to get my phone to work (it didn't). I had a brief chat with some old friends, Caroline and Andrew, who I met when I was working in Peru way back in 2011. They were kind enough to deliver a debit card to me, since I couldn't get my card renewed from overseas without paying way too much. I hopped on the "transPerth" train up to Joondalup, to meet up with another friend, Michael, who I met on my last trip to Western Australia through couchsurfing (highly recommend, if you've never done it). Even though I was pretty zonked from the trip, we had a long catch-up time as I frantically rearranged my bag, chucking out the stuff I wasn't going to need until the conference.

My itinerary:
1. Fly north to Exmouth
2. Manta ray tour at Coral Bay (would do a dive but I'm getting over a cold so I probably can't :( )
3. Camp at Cape Range Park and go snorekeling off the beach (yay!)
4. 4-day tour from Exmouth to Broome via Karijini National Park (lots of cool gorges, this is the bit I didn't see last time)
5. Chill time in Broome (also never been there), hoping to do a day trip to Windjana Gorge to check out the west Kimberley a bit
6. Bus from Broome to Kununurra
7. Meet up with my old bosses, Richard and Ian, in Kununurra and hopefully see a bit of the east Kimberley again
8. Fly back to Perth from Kununurra
9. Drive south to check out Albany and the Tree-top Walk (hoping to do this with Michael and some of his friends, apparently they want to climb a mountain somewhere too)
10. Back to Perth for the conference! Hooray mammals!

So I left behind my "conference clothes", got my phone to work (finally), and the next day I flew to Exmouth, where I rented a car and drove south to Coral Bay.

Look at this stunning view of the Western Australia coastline!

Then it gets a bit dry and desolate moving inland up the coast (I remember that drive from Perth to Exmouth from the last time - there's not much going on except red and scrub and the occasional non-native ungulate...like goats).

This was the view as we landed in Exmouth - you can't see the reef in the distance because Exmouth is around the peninsula (to the east) of the Ningaloo Reef, but the water and those islands look nice.

Got in a few minutes of snorkeling at Coral Bay (lots of coral and fish, but didn't bother with my camera at this stage, keeping the battery solid for the manta rays) and then saw a stunning sunset from the hill overlooking the bay and the other side - whoa!

Onward to the manta rays!!