Australia: Day 69 - Western Australia - 1

I made it back safe and sound after 12 days of excellence in Western Australia. I have quite a bit of catching up to do cause we covered everything from the Western outback to the beautiful Ningaloo Reef and I even finished with a sidetrack visit to Rottnest Island. Needless to say I took a billion pictures, er 1016 I mean and because my computer is back to being slower than something very slow it is taking foooooorever to get them on the computer let alone even trying to sort and delete duplicates etc. Anyway let's go back to the begininng...

Saturday morning came super early as expected but I was so nervous about making my flight I actually woke up before my alarm (which was set at 4 am). A friend from Whitley offered to drive me to the airport by the goodness of her heart (she lives in Perth and knows the pains of getting ridiculously early flights to get there). I am happy to announce the flight, though a little late, was completely problem free and took about 4 hours. Perth is 2 hours behind Melbourne so it was just about 8:30 when we landed. While waiting for luggage I met 8 other students on the trip and we ended up splitting a shuttle to Fremantle where our Hostel was located. The hostel was fun - but a little scary at the same time. For those who don't know - a hostel is a lodging that you generally share with other "backpackers" or traveling folks. It is made up of mostly young people (18-25) but there are some older ones mixed in and some people literally live in the hostel for months. Anyway the reason it is a little scary is because you share rooms with random strangers - the more people the cheaper the room. I definitely got a bad deal on my room and when I walked there were several people passed out in it and you couldn't even see the floor because of all the mess. I decided to suck it up and picked an empty bunk - and then proceeded to immediately transfer anything valuable into my day pack - just in case. By this time I was starving because Virgin Blue airlines doesn't have any free food - not even water!! So I met up with some of the other students to get some grub. After our late brekkie we hit the grocery store to stock up for the next couple of days. I made out pretty well and did my best to buy smart since my food group wouldn't arrive till later. After our shopping the other Americans and I headed to the Fremantle Markets - which were awesome! I definitely wanted to buy everything but I restrained myself due to lack of funds and space in my bag. After the markets and a homemade lunch the others wanted a nap so I set off on my own to explore. I headed to the Maritime Shipwreck Galleries and spent the afternoon reading about the Dutch explorers who first landed in Australia in the 1600s. The displays were nice but had sooo much reading it was difficult to get through it all. I poked around some of the Fremantle shops before heading back to the hostel to see what the others were up to. I found them watching Die Hard on one the TVs and joined in for a while chatting until dinner time. The other students decided to go out for dinner but I figured I would rather eat what I bought at the grocery store and save some money. I ended up meeting up with one of my group members (we were split into food and tent groups of 3 - my group consisted of Victoria [whom I went bushwalking with] and Stephanie - the only real Aussie on the trip) - anyway Steph showed up late cause her flight had been delayed so we made dinner and hung out around the hostel organizing. Being a Saturday night the hostel got pretty crazy as the night wore on so we decided to get some shut eye - though when I woke up at 3am the party downstairs was still raging. I was happy that some of the other trip-goers ended up being in my room - which made it way less scary (though I did sleep with my backpack).