Monday morning blues, it’s called. But I think we have to change that to a Monday Morning merengue. Today we adventure south on this large island of a land.
Mike drove us to the airport that we used as a pickup point in the car rental. It makes it that much easier on the day of departure.
We ordered tickets to Manila this morning and have rented the car to departure, 31st of October. Midnight flight out of Perth and a morning landing in Manila after a short stop over in Hong Kong.
We picked up the car, a little blue Nissan Micra. The smallest car available while still getting an automatic transmission. Driving on the left is OK, but much easier with an automatic. We packed our bags in the trunk and headed of down south.

First stop was Mandurah bay. The were supposedly Dolphins to be seen in the harbor, but no such luck for us. There were none to be seen. But lunch at Sharkey’s was good.

We got back in the car and set a course for Margaret River. This is in the heart of the Vine district here in the Australian south. We had made no booking or reservations before moving along. This is of course extremely stressful for Ms. I-am-always-prepared-and-planned, but we look at it like training. You’re not so good at it? Do it more often.
Getting into town we spotted the Tourist information and got a five minutes with a lady there. We got some brochures and were more or less asked to leave as the closed at 17:00. At least we got some info that lead us to booking a wine your tomorrow. We also found a nice little cottage that we rented for a couple of days. Especially nice with some parrots flying around here. Green and beautiful. They’re fed by the guests, it seems. And are more than willing to sit on your arm and eat out of your hand. Katja ran around like a little kid trying to get a good photo. Here are some of the results.

Since the cottage includes a kitchenette we decided to make dinner at home instead of eating out. Perth is expensive and it’s probably not any better here in the tourist belt. Doing the economic thing is therefor a good for us.