Roadtrippin' Perth (Part 2) - Lancelin Sand Dunes and The Pinnacles

Been a week since I've returned from Perth and I'm already starting to forget bits and pieces of it. Hmm not a good sign. I should hurry and complete all the parts to my Perth travelogue.



And so, after spending the late afternoon of Day 2 freaking out about whether or not we'll be able to rent a car for the rest of our trip, we finally found Ace (located a little out of Perth city) online and got our ride the morning after.

The background story: We knew that most car rental places in Perth requires their drivers to be at least 21 years of age, and since we were all born in the year 96 (aged 20 or 19 going on 20), we had some recommendations from fellow friends and Uber drivers that we could head to Baywaters. They are the only car rental place in the city with the lowest age limit of 20.
All was good when Zhiyi filled up his particulars as the designated driver, up until we had to make payment. They only accept the driver's debit/credit card for payment and Zhiyi didn't bring any of his cards... Kelvin's birthday has yet to pass so he was still too young to be the designated driver lol and I don't have a license so... :')
We left Baywaters in hopes that the lords will take pity on us but we were crushed when every other car rental place in the city rejected us because 1) we were not 21 and 2) payment must be made through the driver's card and not anyone else's.

Can you imagine our distraught knowing that we planned for a road trip but we're unable to get our hands on a car... LOL. Friends, this is why you should always do thorough research online beforehand :')

We decided to drag our sad selves back to our apartment to use its shitty wifi, hoping that the internet would help us somehow. And it did!! Kelvin spent quite some time online but he managed to find Ace, gave them a call to find out that their drivers only have to be at least 18, and we got our rental settled!!






We checked out early morning and made our way to Ace, got our two-wheel drive at a price that was actually cheaper than Baywaters?? Usually it'd cost more to assign two drivers to a car but Ace was pretty generous about the price for a second driver, compared to the other rental places we've seen.

The guys named our ride Lummy. No idea what's with the name I just went along with it lol. But Lummy is amazing, the way she braved through rocky roads and uneven slopes for a week alongside her four-wheel brothers without breaking down.

So after we got Lummy along with us, our first destination was the Lancelin sand dunes! We took the Indian Ocean Drive as advised by our Uber driver since it's a really scenic drive alongside the coast.

LANCELIN SAND DUNES

Travel time: 1h 50min (from Perth)
Total distance covered: 129km







(My camera battery died somewhere around here and I didn't take my spare out of the car so... Lesser visuals.)

You can easily get to the sand dunes via Google Maps/GPS. And right at the entrance, there'll be this huge van that rents out boards and other equipment for your sand boarding pleasure. We got two boards at $10AUD each.

Honestly we all thought that sand boarding was gonna be a breeze. I mean, how hard could it be to remain seated on a wooden board while sliding down steep slopes of sand right? Wrong.
It gets difficult when the sand is sort of damp (and it was since it rained the night before), and staying on the board is not so easy LOL. It took us a while to get the hang of it. By then, you'd probably start to get tired from having to climb your way back up the steep slope after each slide.

I think we spent a good two hours there? Maybe more. Our next destination was The Pinnacles!

THE PINNACLES DESERT

Travel time: 1h (from Lancelin)
Total distance covered: 210km






(when you got no idea what poses to do lol)



It's a scenic place, and you can probably get pretty good photos here as long as the throngs of tourists do not get into your shots. While we here, we also spotted wild kangaroos!!

After The Pinnacles, it was already getting pretty late for Aussie (the sun starts to set at about 3pm to 4pm during the winter, and gets totally dark out by about 6pm) so we decided to settle down at Cervantes for the night.

CERVANTES

Travel time: 23min (from The Pinnacles)
Total distance covered: 232km

Cervantes is a pretty remote and quiet place, with not much going on aside from a couple of restaurants, a supermarket, and a really nice beach. We couldn't find any airbnb apartments here so we were keeping our fingers crossed hoping to get a nice stay, and we did! Our apartment was huuuuge with like 4 single and 1 master bed (LOL) at $150AUD. The beach wasn't too far either and the sunset was pretty amazing.






That concludes the part 2 of our road trip. I'll have the next part up pretty soon!! I realised I don't have as much photos as I'd like for my travel posts this time, and that's mainly because I was taking some videos at the same time. So I guess the trip video would have more visuals?

My plan to blog every two to three days isn't going so well with all the work I have lately. But I'll get to it.

Check out my other posts on Perth:

▶ Roadtrippin' Perth (Part 1) - Perth CBD
▶ Roadtrippin' Perth (Part 2) - Lancelin Sand Dunes and The Pinnacles
▶ Roadtrippin' Perth (Part 3) - Geraldton and Kalbarri National Park
▶ Roadtrippin' Perth (Part 4) - Perth and Fremantle
▶ Roadtrippin' Perth (Part 5) - Caversham Wildlife Park
▶ Roadtrippin' Perth - Travel Video