Pesco Down Under 2009: Margaret River

Margaret River is sort of like a Napa Valley on the beach. It's a beautiful town down south and it's right on the ocean. My friend and I took a bus down (it was the easiest and cheapest way). It was about a 5 hour bus ride (with a 1/2 hour stop for dinner and a movie), but normally it only takes about 3 hours to get there. When we got off the bus our bus driver asked us if we knew where we were going and we admitted that we didn't. He tried to find our hostel on the map, but it wasn't there! We were a little nervous, but we figured we just needed a taxi. Of course we couldn't find the number for a taxi either, so the bus driver told us to walk into town and ask for help. We walked up to a restaurant/bar and asked the bouncers where we could find a taxi. Of course they were right in front of us haha The taxi driver knew where our hostel was and so at last, we arrived. Another girl was supposed to come with us, but she was on crutches so at the last minute she canceled. Luckily, we still had reservations for 3 so we got a room to ourselves :) The hostel was pretty nice (a couple of years ago it was voted the best hostel in australia). The next day we got picked up for our first ever wine tour! Before the tour started they took us to have a nice barbecued lunch on the Margaret River. It was absolutely beautiful and we even got to listen to a guy play the didgeridoo for us! The tour took us to three wineries (one big, one medium, and one small), a cheese factory, a venison farm, a chocolate factory, and a brewery. I liked it all! And it was nice to see some more beautiful Australian landscape. My friend and I hated to waste any alcohol (being the cheap college students that we are), but we quickly realized that we did in fact need to spit out some of the wine if we didn't want to make fools of ourselves as the young, drunk, american girls. We met some nice people (all couples... haha) and our guide was really nice. After the tour we got back to our hostel and watched a couple of episodes of england's version of the office with an american backpacker. Then we went to dinner at a nearby restaurant. We didn't realize that you needed reservations, so as we were deciding what to do a guy came up to us and said, "are you girls waiting for your boyfriends?" we said no. he said, "do you girls have boyfriends?" we said no. He said, "yes!" and then proceeded to tell us that his friends and him were waiting for a taxi and wanted to know if we were coming with them for a wedding party. hahaha we said no and told him we needed dinner. he directed us to the bar where we could also order food and said "just pretend like you're not with me!" I was thinking... but we're not with you... haha After dinner we went back to our hostel and played some cards for a while. This funny man from New Zealand talked with us for a while and we also met this guy from France. I think hostels are kind of fun places to meet people from other countries, especially youth hostels. The next day we went on a walk to and along the beach. It was absolutely gorgeous. We had a nice little picnic lunch on the beach (some crackers, canned salmon, and brie cheese from the cheese factory) but it got cut short after we got attacked by some hungry seagulls. After lunch we got a ride from the hostel manager into town and we walked around for a little while. I wanted to get a magazine for the bus ride back, but they were about $8! They had some books for sale for only $6 so I got one of those instead. Then we caught our bus back to Perth!

The beach had all sorts of cool rock formations like this