Rottnest Island: Bikes, beaches, and bathing suits

Friday morning we woke up at the crack of dawn--or at least it felt like that at 7am. We needed to pack our stuff for Rottnest Island, grab some breakfast, and actually sign up for the bikes and boat ride. Rottnest Island is a few kilometers away from Perth. It's a mostly unpopulated island with no cars, only a few tour buses. The island is about 10km long, and 3km wide, and there are roads that run around the edge of it, perfect for biking if you can handle mostly gentle hills. You can spend the day there (from about 10:30a to 4:00p) or stay overnight. While the island is popular for biking, many people also go snorkeling, diving, and swimming.

We took the "Rottnest Express" boat from downtown Perth. I think the rest of the boats all leave from Fremantle. From the city it takes nearly 2 hours, hardly express, but it's a nice cruise down the Swan River and worth doing and the lazy option if you're staying in the city center. Swan River is shallow, so there's no shipping boats. Instead the river is lined with fancy, expensive housing. If you want to take photos, I recommend the return trip--the light is nicer and everyone is exhausted from the day, so they aren't crowding the small outdoor area on the rear of the boat. There's even a great view of the city center right before the final docking.

It was a clear, beautiful, sunny day. We planned to bike from one of the island and back, and stocked up on water and food in the main settlement before heading out. (By the way, don't rent bikes through the boat company. The bikes aren't great, no water bottle holders, and the ship people aren't organized in getting them out. Just plan to rent from the company on the island. Their bikes looked much better.) It turned out to be a lot hotter than we were expecting--nearly 90F, so we went for a much shorter bike ride with frequent breaks. I was the slowpoke. Seven months without running and I've turned into a bowl of mush. I made it up all the hills except the very last one. Jon faired much better, often stopping and waiting for me to catch up.

Rottnest Island was just gorgeous. Blue skies, even bluer and clearer water, cool breezes blowing in from the ocean, green, scraggly bushes and blooming flowers, and sandy white beaches. If you didn't get in the water, you could almost imagine you were on some tropical island. Since there's no easy way to get to the island, it wasn't busy. We'd pass a few bicyclists every 10 minutes or so.

I don't remember the names of each bay we visited, but we followed the road in a clockwise direction. Our first stop was near a wide, white beach, with five or so small yachts anchored. A group of four people were snorkeling, the young man broke off and snorkeled into the dark area, nearer the shore. We were up on the cliff, but we heard loud cries of, 'Get out of there! There are stingrays!" from an older, female voice. Perhaps his mom? He was just like, "Don't worry. It's fine!". Nothing bad happened, but I was entertained. According to Jon stingrays aren't generally very dangerous, so I'm not sure what the concern was.

We biked a few more kilometers and I was drenched in sweat and wanted to take a break. Fortunately we came across a pretty bay full of limestone and kelp. The water was so clear that even though we were 100 feet or so above it on a cliff, you could see straight into the water. I saw a huge fish and a school of smaller fish hanging out in some of the deeper water pools right below it. It was neat! I felt like we were visiting an aquarium. The cliff had a strong, cool breeze that felt great and kept the flies away.

We biked further and came across some surfers. We watched them for a little while, but only one of them ever caught a wave. I judged them as 'lame', but Jon suggested perhaps I was being a bit harsh. :) After that we turned inland to cross to the other side of the island so that we'd end biking most of the large part of the island but skip the west end. It was slow, hot going, though we came across two small bits of entertainment. First were the tandem bikers. We passed one couple who asked us if we'd seen another couple on a tandem bike (we hadn't). We went a bit further and saw another tandem bike, going in the opposite direction of the first one. They asked us if we had seen a similar bike. We had! So they turned around. We grabbed some shade under one of the few trees. About 10 minutes later, both tandem bikes appeared, happily reunited.

Apparently the island has lots of quokkas, a brown, furry marsupial about the size of a cat that looks like tiny rat kangaroo. In fact just as we were departing the trees, a woman came by on a bike, reporting a friendly quokka a little ways back, but I was too hot and lazy to go back. Now that I've seen pictures of how cute they are, I am sad at my laziness! We did come across a little family of ducks, though. They were the cutest things ever. There were four baby ducklings napping near their parents. Occasionally one would stagger to its feet, move a few inches forward and collapse again or stretch out a foot or neck and then fall asleep as if it all took too much effort. I wanted to take one home with me, but Jon said no. Party pooper. (Just kidding)

When we arrived at the other side of the island, we realized we miscalculated and had ended up right next to the main settlement instead of much further west. We started back out but very early on we passed by an immaculate white beach. At that point I could no longer resist pretty water on such a hot, hot day. First we took off our shoes and socks and just waded in the water. The water was cold, really cold but so refreshing. Then, well, I'll be honest. I realized there were no bathroom nearby to change into my swimsuit, but I did have a sarong, so I may have changed into my swimsuit on the beach under a piece of cloth. And so might have Jon. The water felt amazing. The swimming area was shallow, so you could walk out about 25 feet and still be standing. Jon managed to swim, but I was content to stand. I did duck all the way in at one point, but it felt like my arms were going to freeze off. Still, though, standing there was one of the more idyllic moments of the trip. We were all ready to add a week of beach vacation to our trip...and then we remembered that Jon had to go back to work. Boo. In the end we were thrilled with our miscalculation.