Things you find at the ocean: sting rays, jellyfish, and creepy old men.

Well, if anyone was worried about me never coming home, I have officially been made an offer! His name's John, he's Australian, owns a boat, and took my roommate Carolin and I out for a few civilized nights of sailing, salsa dancing, and dinner at the Perth Yacht Club. (Just for reference purposes, I'm a couple weeks late in writing this- this was while I was in Fremantle.) He's also old... I'm not sure how old, but we met his dad, who is about ninety, if that tells you anything. But he tried to buy me AND my dad tickets to come back to Australia. Nice guy, totally harmless and a complete character... but I don't care- that's still weird.

He picked us up from the train station in this awesome old school bug. Matthieu, who knew him, sat in the front. Carolin and I sat in the back and scrambled to buckle our nonexistent seat belts, exchanging swift nervous glances as the little car hurtled up the street, and finally abandoning all pretense as the bug sailed over a speed bump and part of the roof flew off. John, for his part, continued his stories, calmly sipping his beer (yeah, they do that here) as he maneuvered through traffic, only stopping to curse vehemently at the ineptitude of other drivers.

Despite the ride there, the hours spent sailing were extremely peaceful. I steered the boat and learned to adjust the sails while he and Carolin (who's an avid sailor back home) went over all the ins and outs of sailing.

By this time it was well into the second week of March and I was leaving to travel up the west coast soon. I still hadn't been south of Fremantle, so I rented a car and drove down to Margaret River with Chiara, who was staying in the same hostel as me. Gas is so expensive here, so every hostel has a notice board where people post lift offers or requests and thankfully Chiara, who is nice and very normal, answered mine! They do it by the liter, but we worked it out one time to be 3-4 times as much as back home.

That was a packed trip- we caught a surf competition and stopped at the wineries. This is what Margaret River is famous for- there's a long road lined with wineries and vineyards on either side, one right after the other. I think there are about ninety in the area, which produce about 20% of Australia's premium wines.

I had to.

My favorite part of the trip was further south at Hamelin Bay. There's not much there and it was pretty empty, except for the sting rays that swim along the shore! They're huge and super friendly... you can't really see it here, but it's that black blob right there.

Up close :)

I think the only other blog worthy thing I did before I left was cliff jumping! We went to Little Creatures, which is this awesome brewery in Fremantle, and rented bikes (for FREE! I love free), which we rode over a couple towns and down to the cliffs.

These cliffs!

Cool kid that I am, I did my depth, death, and rock research before we left, which all passed, but nowhere did anyone mention jellyfish! Apparently because they're really common and are the harmless ones that you can't even feel, but I don't care. Let me tell you, it's scary enough to watch the water rushing towards you without noticing last minute that you're about to land on a jellyfish.