Coral Bay

Tuesday 14^th November

So here we were… leaving Exmouth after another lovely night camping up near to Turquoise Bay – our next stop was Coral Bay, a bit further down the peninsular. If we’d had a 4WD, we’d’ve headed south across Yardie Creek, a creek that empties into the sea but which you can cross at low tide – a car a day apparently it claims and without a mate in a 4WD and a winch, I just didn’t fancy it!! When I get settled, this’ll be where I’m coming first on the holidays!

The drive was pretty boring but the highlight once at Coral Bay was that we’d be able to dive and also snorkel with Manta Rays.

Wednesday 15^th November – Saturday 18^th November

We organised the dives and snorkel for Friday / Saturday. Babett decided due to funds that she’d just do the Manta Ray snorkel, which included a dive as well. On the Friday, I joined a dive group to the inner Ningaloo Reef. The dive was fun, but sadly due to bad weather, which was a misnomer as the bad was just a large swell, but there were some inexperienced divers with us and so we couldn’t get out to the outer reef. Disappointing because the outer reef is in deeper water and is where ‘you may be lucky enough to see some of natures largest pelagics in their native environment…’ Considering this included the feared Tiger Shark, I was pretty pissed! All in all though, the diving was better at Exmouth and so were the boozers, which is a bit misleading cos Exmouth had very little going for it boozer-wise.

Snorkelling with Manta’s was top drawer, within 10 minutes of being there, a manta was spotted and we jumped in. It was funny, in hindsight, seeing as we were thrashing away madly to keep up with these things while they glided gracefully through the water. Often, the ray would turn 180º and swim back underneath us all and there would ensue a crazed ‘free-for-all’ as we jockeyed for position – I had my mask knocked off twice by some flailing Germans! but managed to get some awesome shots of the Ray as it turned around. After the third trip, I was pretty knackered, but so were many others, so the final snorkel with the Ray was pretty enjoyable as there were only a few of us left with the beans to swim the last time.

The dive was OK – the coral here is very different to that on the East coast and even further up the coast in that it’s all hard coral – like a small forest, so you didn’t want to drop into it! The highlight was probably the pregnant Reef sharks that we saw, which one of the divers nearly swam into – I didn’t realise how big it was until I saw it was nearly as long as him!! Bless!

The other highlight was the Campsite ferals who turned out to be Oirish – they exceeded even my expectation of liking a drink and at our campsite, were more pissed than anyone I’ve ever seen!! One guy had passed out at the wheel of his van and either knocked the handbrake off or had somehow started the car and it was moving on ‘tickover’ as it slowly advanced towards and hit a tree – collecting half a tent along the way. Another night, a lass had passed out on the camp kitchen table in the compromising position often pictured in papers when there are the stories of the ‘demon drink’. At the time, I didn’t know they were Irish, until the van, now recovered from it’s loving embrace with the tree, was leaving early one more morning and of the 6 people in the car, I recognised the lad and lass, who were swigging from a bottle of spirits and shouting with glee! It was then I clocked that they were our cousins from across the sea! Class! It’s what the travelling is all about!