I wanted to take the Greyhound or a hop-on/hop-off bus up the West Coast to Broome, but since my visa expires in mid-July and I have a lot to see, I decided to take a tour instead.

The tour started badly when Jen dropped me off at the bus stop in the teeming rain at 6.40 on a Monday morning and the bus was an hour late. I'm not a morning person and was feeling a bit ratty after too little sleep. It got worse when we ended up waiting for another hour in a McDonald's carpark in Joondalup, the northernmost suburb of Perth, for someone who had missed the bus.

We stopped off in Nambung National Park and walked around the Pinnacles, which are striking rock formations in the middle of the desert, then drove for ages before staying the night at a hostel in Kalbarri. The next day we went out to the remote Murchison River Gorge and climbed down in the Z-Bend Gorge. We'd got a fair way down when one of the group lost his balance while negotiating a rocky step and fell around three metres, landing on his arm and then his head. It was an awful thing to happen and we were lucky that another member of the group was a doctor from Perth who was visiting WA. He checked him over and found that he was ok, but shouldn't be moved and would need a neckbrace. Someone went for help and after a while, a team from the emergency rescue services arrived, along with the park rangers, the police and the ambulance paramedics. It took a few hours and a great deal of effort for them to assemble and carry him out of the gorge on a stretcher. He went off to hospital for X-rays but the prognosis was good and it looked like he would continue with his trip shortly.

We were running very late after that and ended up driving in the dark to Denham. Wildlife comes out at dusk and we hit a kangaroo on the way. It seemed like the run of bad luck ended after that, and it all got better from thereon in!

Highlights of the trip were the stromatolites, Shell Beach, which looked like somewhere you might shoot an arty film or wacky Kate Bush video; Shark Bay, though we didn't see any sharks; and Monkey Mia, where we watched the wild dolphins being fed. It was interesting, but I have to admit I'm not the biggest fan of dolphins. For the longest time I thought they were small creatures, like porpoises, and I was taken aback to discover a few years ago that they're actually bigger than me. They have really creepy human-like eyes as well, and peer at you from their sides in the water. I wondered what they were thinking as they clocked us all. They had been given names like "Friend" and "Sparky" by the researchers, which I thought was rather naff. If I had a dolphin, I'd call it "Ian" or "Frank" or something incongrouous like that.

A group of us went for a late night swim in the warm waters at Coral Bay, and then took a charter boat the next day to swim with manta rays. I'm scared of deep water, not a very competent swimmer (some might say "remedial") and frightened of things lurking in the water... so this was pretty much my worst nightmare come to life, but it was something I wanted to do and I felt I should face my fear. It turned out to be a fantastic experience - although my snorkel tube filled with water initially and I thought a manta ray was coming up to swallow me - and I soon got accustomed to being in the water and floating. There were some beautiful brightly coloured fish swimming amongst the coral and it was like a whole new world was opened up to me as I bobbed along checking it all out - cliched as it sounds! We also saw turtles and dolphins from the boat!

After Coral Bay, we headed up to Exmouth and went snorkelling on the Drift Loop off Turquoise Bay, where a strong current takes you over the reef. I saw an amazing flute fish, some flat fish, lots of friendly shoals that followed you around, and loads of manky black sea slugs! We hiked a bit around Yardie Creek and watched a superb sunset.