In the modern day world of social media where everyone’s travel photos are at the tip of your fingers, it’s easy to see amazing destinations all over the world on your small mobile phone screen and romanticize about how lovely it would be to visit. You see hill after hill of sand dunes and think, what a beautiful place to visit and photograph; I’d love to stand up on that hill and experience that.

Then, your reality comes, and you do visit. And the experience is not as lovely as you imagined. Instead, you end up feeling the greatest winds that Western Australia is capable of and nearly get blown down a sand dune with the thickest layer of sand stuck on every inch of your body, even when you have clothes on. Your mouth is full of sand because the wind blows it into your mouth the few times you open your mouth to either talk to your partner or scream down the hill. All the while, you are trying to do sand boarding for the first time and realize it’s not as idyllic as Instagram uploaded photos want you to think it is. In fact, you are trying to board down a hill against the wind, which results in your eyeballs getting stuck with sand in them; your sunglasses, or your “sunnies” as we call them here, are not enough to cover your eyes from the intense speed of the sand blowing literally everywhere. You have to floss sand out of your teeth later that evening. That’s how much sand there is. It is seriously everywhere and even gets embedded in your scalp and ear canals. If you are a woman, it’s even in your bra. Yep — in your bra. Let’s not even get started where else that sand found its way to.

That was us today at the Lancelin Sand Dunes after our local WA rock lobster lunch north of Perth. We rented one sand board for two hours and stayed only half an hour to board down the dunes. The guy from whom we rented the board said that we came on a bad day and that today had some of the worst winds Lancelin was capable of seeing.  I don’t think I’ve ever experienced more insane wind in my life.

And the end part that was really bad and is lingering? I didn’t have my hair tied up because I wasn’t thinking, so this monstrous Lancelin wind destroyed my hair. I ended up getting large knots all over my fine hair, resulting in huge chunks getting ripped out tonight with a wide-toothed comb. And I never get knots. Now, my hair is brittle at the ends and probably in the worst condition it’s ever been in. I never thought hair masks or leave-in conditioner was important until now. I’m going to need at least a night’s worth of coconut oiling to get my hair back.