We finally arrived in Esperance at about 7:30pm, after about 9 and a half hours in the car and pulled up at Blue Water Lodge YHA. We were greeted at the reception desk by a very friendly lady who checked us in and took us down to our room. It was a very basic room, just 2 single beds, a fold out table, a chair and a small cupboard! But it was clean and not boiling hot! We made ourselves a quick bite to eat and collapsed into bed, both very worn out from so many hours on the road.
 
We were up and out fairly early the next day as we knew there was a lot to see . We had decided to start with the Great Ocean Drive, which, as a 40km loop, is Esperance's scenic tour of the town. The first thing that struck us as we drove along the Esplanade was the beautiful houses, they are all different shapes, sizes and styles which makes the coastline interesting on both sides of the road!
 
The coast is made up of a number of different beaches so we pulled into each one to take in the view and get some stunning photos as some of these beaches have been voted Australia's best! This also made it so lovely to drive as every corner you turned or hill you went over you were suddenly greeted by the most beautiful blue water. These beaches included West Beach, Blue Haven, Salmon Beach, Fourth Beach, Twilight Beach, Observatory Point, Nine Mile Beach, Ten Mile Lagoon and Eleven Mile Beach! All of which were gorgeous and offered something different to the one before!
 
We stopped for a little while at Blue Haven where I enjoyed some sunbathing while Matt being all energetic firstly went for a run along the sand and then came back and tried to teach himself to body surf, we'd seen the ironmen doing this in the races and usually you see Australian guys doing it . He'd never tried before but he was itching to learn. He was trying on the smaller waves first as its so difficult to do but he is improving!
 
We pulled over briefly at an area where a bush fire had just taken place a few days earlier. We could see a tractor, car & other farm machinery completely burnt out and lots of trees were damaged and farmland destroyed. The smell of burnt wood and charred metal hit the back if your throat and the whole scene was overwhelming, particularly when you consider the fire was started deliberately! For all the fires we had heard of and just missed this was the first real end result of one we'd seen. So sad to see such avoidable devastation!
 
The final attraction on the loop was the Pink Lake, whose name is very misleading as it is not actually pink! Its more just a white salty colour. It is called that because of the reaction between the algae that grows there and the salt which, during photosynthesis, gives off a pink colour instead of green?! Regardless of the science, it definitely wasn't pink so we felt a little bit duped .
 
We decided our favourite viewpoint had been Twilight Beach so, after completing the loop, we made our way there for a final bit of sunbathing. Matt had another go at body surfing as the waves were bigger here and I got some good photos of him riding the waves in on his tummy! Eventually the sun dropped behind the sand dune and we had to call it a day so we made our way back to the car and to the hostel to freshen up and have dinner, we had aready noticed here that once the sun goes down the temperature drops a lot in Western Australia especially the further south you go. So we were soon quite glad of this as we noticed we had both caught the sun today. Once we'd finished cooking our tea of vegetable pasta we got chatting to a German lad named Sven who is hitch hiking his way around Australia! As he finds it all too expensive, rather him than me!!! Funnily we started talking to him then as we went to sit down we noticed his evening meal was a big bowl of super noodles (with way too much water in) and a huge raw carrot?! This was a brilliant conversation starter as we laughed at his fine dining . We actually felt guilty eating our nice pasta as he drank his super noodle flavoured water from the bowl but it was all quite amusing. 
 
Being Friday night we decided to check out the nightlife but being such a small place there seems to only be about two bars and we had been told that the Pier Hotel was the place to go so we drove down to check it out! I'm not sure what I was expecting but I certainly wasn't prepared for what seemed like a holiday camp function hall full of workers and couples! It was very strange but it was good to get out of our almost empty hostel and actually see people, and for Matt it was a relief to finally have a beer! The fun was all over by about 9pm though and we made our way back to our hostel and to bed!
 
Matt had the alarms set for 8am today as we were off to Cape Le Grand national park! Matt woke around 7 to notice it was raining outside. In his devistation he checked the forecast online and it was going to rain until 10 but be clear from 12ish, this was a massive relief as there really isn't much to do here if it had rained all day, so we set off into the cloudy sky praying for sunshine . It took about 40 minutes to drive there and we were both very excited to spot a kangaroo crossing the road ahead of us - excited because it's beautiful seeing them in the wild but also excited that this time we saw it way before we got close enough to run it over at 100km/h. 
 
You have to buy a day pass to enter the park but at $11 for us & the car we couldn't grumble, especially after having just driven past Esperance's homage to Stonehenge. This was ridiculous as it looked nothing like Stonehenge as it was all brand new perfectly cut stone. It was Stonehenge with a 21st century make over but surely that defeats the object of it as you would go for the history of it?! To top that off they wanted $10 per person just to have a quick look (needless to say we didn't go in!). After consulting the map we had just been given, we decided to head to Le Grand beach first. On the way we saw 2 more wild kangaroos who seemed quite happy to be stood in the road until we rolled a little too close and they hopped away into the bush and disappeared! Le Grand beach didn't really look that grand as the sun hadn't yet broken through the grey clouds from the earlier rain and it was very windy - perfect for the surfers who were gathered there doing their exercises before hitting the waves but not so good for us! So we jumped back in the car and moved on to the next stop on our map ...
 
Frenchman Peak is a pretty big mountain which you can climb. It takes about 2 hours to get up and back down and is considered a hard climb! I was already uncertain about this due to my history with mountain climbs but once we realised that although we had our hiking boots in the car, we didn't actually have any socks with us, that idea was scrapped, much to my relief!
 
Instead we drove to Lucky Bay, where we discovered the most amazing view of the bay. The sea was an incredible blue colour with white sand and kangaroos running down the beach. We decided, as a compromise, to do the 3km walk along the beach around the bay to the viewing platform as it was still cloudy and only 11am. The start of this walk made us a little apprehensive as we had to traipse through a big boggy area full of stagnant water but it improved very quickly as we spotted the 4 kangaroos strolling along the sand! This was actually a beautiful and very enjoyable walk, particularly as we kept getting splashed by some pretty big waves which seemed to appear from nowhere, almost knocking us off our feet sometimes! As the wind was up there was some very big waves so it was nice to look at them breaking as we walked . It took about 45 minutes to walk to the viewing platform where we had a spectacular panoramic view of the whole bay where we really got to see how amazing the colour of the sand and sea was. It was so beautiful as we stood and looked for a while and then headed back which was about 45 minutes again to the car where we stopped for sandwiches! We were both pretty worn out by now and luckily the sun was starting to appear.
 
This was were our diet of cheese slice sandwiches began for the next 3 days, we were trying to eat on a bit of a budget as we had an expensive weekend coming up. Once fully fed, we decided to chance driving to Rossiter Bay even though it was along an unsealed road, it looked fairly harmless but we very quickly changed our minds as even the first 50 metres were too bumpy for us and our little car so we turned round!
 
Instead we drove to Thistle Cove which has an interesting collection of rocks including Whistle Rock, which is a huge, precariously balanced formation which makes a whistling sound as the wind blows through it . I really don't understand how this rock is actually in the spot it's in or how it's balanced but it is. It's very high up from the sea level, so who knows?! But it's still quite impressive. After taking a few photos, we walked down to look at the beach and stood on a huge rock to take in the view of the big beautiful beach with absolutely no one on it. It almost seemed crazy that no one was there. 
 
The final viewpoint on our map was Hellfire Bay where, after a quick toilet break, we walked down to find the most gorgeous secluded beach! The waves were pretty big but the beach was well sheltered and virtually empty. After taking more photos, we decided to drive back to Le Grand Beach and see if we could get some better snaps now the weather had improved and to see the surfers, but apart from seeing a lizard crossing the road, our journey was wasted as it was even windier, there was still no sun but there were lots more surfers! This wasted journey wasn't a great idea as Matt had forgotten to fill up with petrol when we left this morning so we were now driving round very carefully with the tank creeping towards the red line and a 55 minute drive home to do still!!
 
We agreed that Hellfire Bay was a much better place to spend our last couple of hours at the national park so we made our way back there! If we thought the beach was deserted on our first visit, it was even more so now with just one elderly couple there taking photos then they left so there was no one but us! It was perfect and we felt very spoilt as we laid back to sunbathe, read and relax!
 
Eventually the time came for us to head back to town and to our hostel . Luckily the petrol lasted and we safely got back to get showered, changed and make dinner before heading to bed! Beans on toast was our dish for the night. If we hadn't caught the sun yesterday we had now as we both had lovely red shoulders with vest marks. 
 
On our final day in Esperance, we were up and out of bed very early. Not by choice but because the extremely loud fire alarm went off at 7:45! It turned out to be someone burning their toast in the kitchen but nevertheless we were now awake! We packed the last of our things, having been super organised and done most of it the night before, had a quick bite for breakfast and checked out! We had decided to pop to the shops to see if we could pick up a magnet and postcards but had forgotten that being Sunday, very few shops were open! Luckily, the Visitor Information Centre had a good selection and we were able to get what we wanted there!
 
The next stop was a return to our favourite beach, Twilight Beach, for a few hours of sunbathing. We realised as soon as we laid down our towels that this may not be the relaxing morning we had hoped for as it was very windy and, as a result, sand was blowing pretty fiercely across the beach! This also proved hilarious as Matt covered himself in sun cream then as he went to sit down landed straight in the sand as his towel blew off causing him to get sand on his fresh cream . We stuck it out for a couple of hours and Matt even braved the water for a while but the wind continued to pick up and it became impossible to sunbathe and was too chilly in the water so we gave in and made our way back to the car. 
 
We consulted the map to see if there was anything else we could spend our last couple of hours here doing and found Lake Woody Nature Reserve. This is actually a group of lakes which you can walk around, fish or take a kayak out on. It was a lot hotter here as it wasn't as windy and it was very relaxing watching the birds on the water. We then we went for a lovely stroll up to Lake Windabout where we watched a man and his 2 children out on a kayak and we had fun playing on the groins. All in all a perfect way to end our time in Esperance.