Australia: Day 73 - WA

I was up well before sunrise (guess I went to bed too early) so I decided to go shower while we had access to hot water. Of course I couldn't get the hot water working and didn't want to waste it - in the desert, during a drought - so I pretty much soaped up and took a 30 second freezing shower and just ignored my hair. That will wake you up. We had packed up and were on the bus by 7:30 and driving to our first trek of the day - Hancock Gorge. Hancock was narrow and required some scary climbs (including a big ladder - eeek) - eventually the gorge got so narrow we needed to do the Spider walk (see below) to get through, but when we did it opened up to a beautiful pool which ran down to another narrow stretch and then off a cliffish thing. We needed climbing gear to go any farther - so we made our way back out the gorge after some icy swimming. Next we headed down Weano Gorge which was also narrow and we needed to wade a bit to get through. Eventually we reached a section where we needed to propell down a mini waterfall on a rope. The big pool below was numbing - but beautiful. Touching any walls in the shadow however proved to be a poor idea because they were covered in GIANT spiders. We abandoned our bags (as we needed to full out swim the next section - sorry no pictures) and headed onward. Eventually we reached a ridiculous drop off, that I wouldn't even go near, requiring climbing gear to enter. It was awesome. Once back out of the gorge we took a short walk to Oxers Lookout which overlooks the area where four gorges (Weano, Hancock, Joffre, and Red) meet. The lookout also serves as a rescue station/platform to lift people out of the gorge who have been injured climbing (yikes!). After lunch we started our drive to Coral Bay. We quit about 6 and made camp in a random pull off area (for road trains) in the middle of the outback. We made dinner and discussed stars and riddles. Unfortunately the pasta must have disagreed because I ended up getting sick - ew. I decided I should probably just go to bed and hope to feel better in the morning.