Cape Le Grand – Stunning beaches and meetings

23/2/2015

I've had one of the most amazing days.

It all started out with my alarm clock not ringing at the assigned time, 5:30am, to make sure I'm in Cape Le Grand super early and increase my chances of getting a camping spot here. There are only about 15 spots here and it is, what the Australians call: 'First come, best dressed' – meaning the early bird catching the worm and in regards to camping, securing the spot.

I woke up at 6:55am, looked at my clock and was slightly panicky. Suffice to say, I left the camp ground withing 10 minutes of getting up – postponing my breakfast to after achieving my mission: A camp spot close to the beach of my favorite national park.

Anyway, I arrived in time and got the very last spot – lucky number 7. After a my usual office standard breakfast (Greek yoghourt, 180 nutrition blend, brain octane, and a few other super foods that I don't want to mention in order to avoid totally embarrassing myself) I left to hike up Frenchman's Peak. Lovely hike, apparently 2 hours return, which took me about 50 minutes, including at least a 15 minutes photo session on the summit. There were some birds around here, enjoying the breeze and updraft, I think a type of falcon, doing stunning areal maneuvers, interesting to watch and hard to photograph ;-)

Next stop: Lucky Bay. There is a van selling coffee there, serving clients during the busy summer months since 2013. That was new to me and I had to check it out. Doc made me a lovely Cappuccino and I treated myself to a Black Forest cake.

Welcome to Luck Bay

Sitting at this amazing beach – white sand, turquoise and blue water, quite often some kangaroos around to entertain the tourists, some granite rocks in the distance – and enjoying my feed, I saw a taxi pull up right next on the beach (!) to the coffee van. Out came Faraz the passenger and Wazza, the taxi driver. I got in a conversation with them over coffee. Turns out that Faraz flew into Esperance to see the real Pink Lake on an island yesterday and visit Cape Le Grand (CLG) today.

Lucky Bean Coffee Van - home of the Kangacino - I heard its a Cappuccino with some Maltesers as aehm Roo droppings ;-)

Later I found out that Faraz accidentally left his drivers license in Perth and hence had to take a taxi to see CLG. I reckon its about a 60km trip each way. As we got into a very interesting conversation right from the start, I spent most of the day with Faraz, drove him to Thistle Cove, to show him the most perfect beach (in my humble opinion) and hang out there. I had an amazing time discussing life, business, passion, opportunities, scenarios for the future and many more things.

Turned out that he is the CEO of an investment company in London (think that is the first CEO business card I ever got handed to me). He's got a lot of experience in marketing, a field that I want to get better at as well and it was great to finally talk to somebody who shares quite a lot of my thoughts about business, corporations, leadership and opportunities. Faraz had a career as an investment banker, found out that the corporate world is not for him either and hence founded his own investment company with some partners. As he is traveling a lot, he even met and had a conversation with Sir Richard Branson in airport lounge at some stage and confirmed what I thought: Sir Richard is a very down to earth person. I bounced some ideas about my possible future through with him and got some helpful advice and nice offer. I took heaps of pictures that day, I think I need a place with a good internet connection to share them! We built amazing rapport from a conversational perspective and I'd like to catch up with Faraz wherever our paths cross again.

By pure chance I bumped into what turned out to be a sensational conversation. I'm really thankful that such random chance meetings, they help me to figure out my thoughts and find my way.

Faraz showing the Roo something on the iPhone 6, or perhaps taking a selfie?

I really need to quote one of my friends, Harry G now: Life is geil!

Foot note for the English speaking readers, “geil” is a word used by the youth to describe something amazing, great, sensational.

Another thing I wanted to share here was what I read yesterday night in the book from William Least Heat-Moon's book “Blue Highways”:

“Satisfaction is doin' what's important to yourself. A man ought to honor other people, but he's got to honor what he believes in too.”

While this book about a journey across the US by the author, it is difficult to read but has many gems of wisdom and thought provoking short stories ingrained.

Dinner at the camp kitchen was great too, I met a lot of lovely people and we had some great conversations going. Two women there, from Perth but now living in Denmark, WA, were extremely interesting: they have done some amazing cycle tours over the years, one of them taking more than a year to ride from Alaska (!) down to Tierra del Fuego – Feuerland. Just on their tracking bikes with some bags attached to them, a tent and nothing much else. One of them did some tours alone for example from Darwin to Perth, or across Europe. Quite inspiring what stories they had to tell. Must be quite an adventure.

Distance traveled: 87km

24/2/2015

This place is fantastic! Waking up, quick walk on the beach and then preparing a nice breakfast.

In the morning I checked out Hellfire Bay – oh wow, sensational as well – had a good chat with some Australians, went for a swim, moved on to Thistle Cove – my all time favorite beach, took some more photos, cooled my feet (Sun burnt! Forgot to put sun screen on my toes yesterday!) in the turquoise to blue sea and left for a coffee at Lucky Bay mobile coffee van.

Hellfire Bay - oh yeah!

Thistle Cove - as beautiful as it was a few years ago when I took a similar photo

Today I had to share the beach with 1 other person... remember the times at the Adriatic Sea in Italy?

Perfectly timed, one of the local kangaroos came to the beach to entertain the visitors.

Lucky Bay - staring match - local vs. tourist ;-)

The weather got rather hot, 35 degrees at least today. I spent the afternoon low key, practicing guitar, reading quite a lot (Richard Branson's: The Virgin Way, Justin Beginners Guitar book and started with Marcus Aurelius – Meditations) and preparing for an early departure tomorrow. It's going to be a long day behind the wheel tomorrow, so I better get into gear early.

It didn't cool down much over night and I experienced the first night with troubles sleeping due to the heat. Got some more reading done though to make time pass and got up bright and early.

Distance traveled: 35km