Rottnest Island is just off the coast and is a quick 30 minute ferry ride away. When it's clear out you can still see the Perth skyline.
View of Perth from Rotto
No one is allowed to bring their cars on the island, leaving the roads open to pedestrians and cyclists. The tour around the island is 29 km, and is full of hills! It was pretty windy on Saturday when we did the tour of the island, but the views of the ocean made it worthwhile.
Bike paths to rival Madison's
Views of the island were plentiful and breaks every few hundred meters became routine. Although it looks like an awful day weather wise, it was cool enough to ride our bikes without getting too hot and I didn't have to worry (so much) about getting a sunburn! All good things!
Rotto by bike
We stumbled onto a couple of great beaches and snorkel sites throughout the day. Our first one was Parker's Bay? We didn't really check the map to find anything that day, we kind of just kept biking and stopped when something caught our attention. The first place had some pretty legit waves crashing offshore, but there was a more secluded bay area that worked for snorkeling. Lots of fish, pretty good coral reef area, but intense currents that made snorkeling without fins not as enjoyable.
snorkeling with the fishes, against the waves
We then biked over to another area of the island and found another place to snorkel. This was a really fun site-the rocks and reef started really close to shore and was really shallow for a while. It couldn't have been more than a foot deep for the first stretch of it, and then you would suddenly stumble onto an open area that was about 10 feet deep, and with tons of little crevices in the rocks where the fish would hide. This fish here were a lot bigger and stuck to those deeper pockets. It was fun to dive down and see what was hiding under the rocks.
But the water has gotten pretty cold now that summer is basically over and fall has begun. So the rest of the afternoon and early evening was spent biking. And searching for quokkas! Quokkas, to the locals, probably just look like big rats. But we all found them adorable. They have mainland counterparts called quendas that are all over Student Village, and because there is a forested area right behind my bedroom window I can hear them all scurrying around at night. But quokkas are only found on Rotto and are a lot bigger. We had heaps of fun searching them out and making some new friends.
making friends with quokkas is a 3 step process
Saturday night was dinner and then back to the cabin. It was an exhausting day, and the only way to reward ourselves was with an amazing dinner. I had chocolate pancakes with Macadamia Nut ice cream, and some muffins for dessert. It was absolutely delicious.
Our cabin was supposed to hold 6 people, but we're cheap and squeezed 11 people in. It had a mini-kitchen with a frig, stove, and some cutlery and we had our own shower and bathroom.
We got up early Sunday morning to check out of the room and then head back down to Little Salmon Bay for some more snorkeling. This site has a snorkel trail, and was a great find. Oh yeah, the sun had come out!
the water finally looks inviting
This was a great coral reef, a lot bigger than the other two sites, and had tons of neat fish, both small and large. It was fun to follow the underwater signs and have more of a structure to the dive. The water was still cold, but we all warmed up much faster on the beach today than yesterday!
I left Rotto in the early afternoon so I could get back into Perth for the first footy game of the season. The Freo Dockers were playing the Adelaide Crows, and the Crows were supposed to win. But guess what?? Freo won! It was a great game! I could give you my interpretation of what I saw, but instead check out this article in today's paper, written by someone who actually knows the rules of the game.
But what I do know of footy is that it is a lot more fast paced than football and just overall a lot more fun to watch and be a part of. The rules aren't too complicated and even if you don't fully understand them you can still follow what's going on in the game. For a better explanation, check out wikipedia.
A lot of my photos didn't turn out great-either too sunny or too dark, or the players were just moving too fast and became blurs on my screen. But here are some from the night-hopefully you now have an idea of what footy is all about!
pictures from Rotto here and pictures from footy here.
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