Exmouth - desert and reef

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Greetings from Exmouth and Ningaloo Reef - What a nice change! Dry and hot. Now anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a fan of dry and hot, but after a month of cold and wet, it's great! Exmouth is a tiny town about 1000km north of Perth. It was originally established as town to support a US Naval communications base. The base is still here and is shared by US and Australia. Like all Western Australia towns, there's nothing to do, but the surrounding scenary is really nice. I've hired a mountain bike and am riding all over - mostly in the early morning and late afternoon to avoid the real heat of mid-day. Those are great times to be out in the "bush" anyway, since that's when the critters come out. I took a bus to the everyone's recommended snorkelling beach yesterday, Torquoise Bay. It really is - white sands, torquoise water - great for viewing lots of colorful fish and coral. As a result of the bike and the snorkel, my wildlife sightings have increased tremendously: kangaroos (lots of the them), wallaroos, and emus; no dingos yet, but I'm still hoping; lots and lots of wildflowers (it's spring here and a recent rain brought out the best in the desert); termite hills as tall as 7 feet; colorful birds including big flocks of noisy white cockatoos, pink-bellied parrots (althouh, these are all over the west coast), and, of course, the above-mentioned emus. At the reef I saw lots of colorful parrot fish, wrasses, butterflyfish, etc. in bright blues, pinks, greens, yellows - you name the color. Corals not as colorful, but there were two different types of greyish coral with pretty lavender tips. The giant clams were pretty cool, not giant exactly (maybe 1-2 feet across), but I hadn't seen one alive before. The biggest underwater critter was a 6 foot long leopard shark. He was sleeping, so I got a good look at him! Torquoise Bay is interesting because it has a pretty significant current. To snorkel there, you leave your stuff at one end of the beach, walk to the other end, get in and float with the current as you view the fish. If you want to linger and see something more closely or for a longer time, you have paddle pretty hard to stay in one place. Like I said, the land is pure desert with bright red soil and (at least for now) green brush. The hills are red an rocky and make a nice contrast with the water. My feeble attempts at photos are shown above. The reef photos are cheats - photos taken from a brochure - but they give an indication of what I saw. Here's a link to a map: http://www.travelblog.org/gmaps/map_4QO.html

You'll next hear from me when I'm in Gibraltar!
Take care,
Deirdre

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