Just realized that my last blog is already a while ago and so many exciting things have been happening since. I was back on Guppy for a little bit but busy as always trying to organize a lot of things at the same time. After I sailed Guppy to Whangarei I attended an opening of an exhibition in the Auckland museum . The exhibition is called Moana ‘’my ocean’’. The exhibition starts at the surface of the sea with the smallest creatures and goes further into deepest parts of our oceans. I found it a very interesting and well made exhibition. Late at night I drove back up north to Guppy because the next day I was flying out from there to Dunedin for a presentation. The weather hadn’t been very good in the last days and down south the city’s were covered in snow and there are floods in many places. At the airport in Whangarei they told me that the chance of getting to Dunedin that day wouldn’t be very big, but unlike many other travellers who’s flights were cancelled I was extremely lucky and still got to Dunedin without much of a delay. The presentation for the Otago yacht-club went nicely as it was put together with the prize giving, and quite a few people and many kids turned up. Dan, who had left me in Christchurch two months ago to go working in Australia, had just finished his job so I looked for a cheap flight to Perth and found a good price. So a few days later I gave Guppy a big kiss and a warm hug before I set off to Perth. For the past two weeks I have been exploring Western Australia, distances here are far bigger then what I’m used to and everything seems ages away. We borrowed an old car from a sailor friend who just happened to be back home for a couple of days from his travels and took it down the coast to Albany. We stopped a couple times along the way and jumped in the water, but that didn’t last too long as the water is a bit to cold in winter for swimming. On the way we explored some caves, and high treetops, which they used to locate fires in the old days. Back in Perth I did a couple presentations for yacht clubs around here and spend some time surfing at the beaches on WA’s sunset coast. I haven’t been eaten by a shark yet which I am pretty happy about as that seems to happen quite often here. According to all the signs that we have encountered on the way everything in Australia is quite dangerous. We came across signs such as ‘’Rock risk area’’ while climbing in a cave, ‘’Tree climbing risk area’’ in the forests and a whole bunch of ‘’Coast risk area’s’’ in coastal areas on the way as well. It’s kind of sad to realize that we live in a world where people can’t think for themselves anymore, where these signs are actually necessary because if anything happens to them they blame others… But we had heaps of fun anyway. Next plan is to go up to Thailand but flights are a bit expensive at the moment as the holidays have started over here, but hopefully we can find something affordable soon and head back into the warmth.

Laura