On our way to Denham in Shark Bay we had to cycle along the peninsula and over many rolling hills. The geographic features of the area create a hyper-saline bay that only allows little cockles to live there and their tiny shells form the beach - no sand, just shells. The World Heritage listing mainly comes from the vast sea grass fields that feed all kinds of life and mainly the 10 000+ dugongs (about 10% of the worldwide population).
After arriving in Denham we were lucky to meet Braydon and Malika, a 19 year old couple living in a nice small house in town with their dog Macy. They invited us to stay with them and we had a great time together. We went squidding at the jetty (Jonas caught two squid), they took us to the pub and showed us around in town. One day we spent on a 4WD tour into Francois Peron National Park that got us to explore the area we could not have reached with our bikes as the tracks were way too sandy. There we saw many sharks, turtles, rays, two thorny devils, a big group of 30 emus and even two dugongs passing by. Not only the wildlife is stunning though, but also the scenery is beautiful with the red cliffs on white dunes over clear blue and green water. The tour was not cheap but definitely worth the money!
On our last day we hitched a ride to Monkey Mia which is the main attraction of Shark Bay. Their dolphin experience allows visitors to get very close to wild dolphins and some lucky ones are picked to feed a fish to one of them. They are only feed them maximum 10% of their daily needed fish to keep them hunting for themselves and keep them wild. This allows scientists to study dolphins and Monkey Mia is the second longest research project on dolphins in the world.
The wind was still strong and coming in as a head wind for us, so we decided to look for a ride further south, cycling is just too exhausting and depressing with that wind. Luckily our hosts got us on contact with Greg, a local guy who was driving to Geraldton anyway and who could take us and all our stuff. That way we saved 400km and in Geraldton we will now wait for the wind to drop before we keep on cycling.

All the best,
Keep cycling,
Vroni, Droni and Joni