Perth- Chocolate, Honey, Sand

This was a really full day trip, though we started out at around 11:00 am and finished at around 11:00 pm. Our trip included many stops in Western Australia (WA) including Margaret River Chocolate Company store, a honey place, some beautiful vistas along the way, sandsurfing in Lancelin and lastly a tour of the Pinnacles in Namburg National Park along with a gorgeous sunset and then stargazing in the park- more on that later.  It was nearly a private tour as our "group" was just the two of us plus one other person and our guide.

We didn't see a lot of wildlife on this trip with the exception of a couple of emus. There is not much agriculture in WA. Mainly what you see is native bush and livestock. The soil isn't great. We saw at least one field ablaze. They were also doing controlled burns somewhere south of Perth. We could see the smoke haze off in the distance but the skies seemed ok where we were each day. At night, though, I could smell the burning in our hotel room. Or else it was trash being burned outside during the night. I don't know what the regulations for this are in Perth.

We did see some cows. Cow fact: Those who do this sort of thing are breeding towards darker faced cows to avoid skin diseases and skin cancer found on the faces of lighter skinned cows. Poor cows!

The next two photos are of plants known as grass trees (balga).

This plant is a bush combo hardware store and supermarket. The Nyoogar people had so many uses for the Balga. If you mix the sap with charcoal and kangaroo dung you can make a great superglue. Young white shoots of the plant are edible. The leaves were used to make mattresses and spears; they were also used as thatch for huts, roofs and for starting fires.  The bushes get infested with "witchity grubs"- a great source of protein. The grass trees only grow about 15mm (2/3 inch) per year.

Here we saw sheep and alpaca. The alpaca act as "guard dogs" for the sheep.

The chocolate shop (full disclosure, they also had wine tasting if you were interested in that).

The chocolate shop was interesting simply because there was excellent chocolate. We brought back several small bars to keep our chocolate habit going. An interesting one is dark chocolate with red grape. This bar combines the benefits of chocolate and grapes into one delicious morsel.Neither of us  could really detect the grape.

At the honey shop we tasted quite a few of the options but found all of them too intense in flavor. There is a parrot bush honey. The parrot bush grows all over WA. Before we lived here, my favorite honey was orange blossom. Now, it's rambutan honey!!!!!! Yum!

There are pockets of sand dunes in quite a few places but Lancelin is famous for this.  An hour and a half north of Perth, Lancelin is apparently the premiere location for sandboarding/surfing. We didn't get a photo but there are signs as you head into this place that say "take a photo of this sign, you may need the information." It contains contact numbers for people who will come and pull your car out of the sand should you drive beyond the roadway and parking area for cars. You can rent dune buggies but apparently lots of people drive their cars beyond the safe areas and get stuck.

It is extremely windy at this spot! B and the other guest on our tour were assisted by our guide Gavin as they gave the sandsurfing a try!

B sandboarding!