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Published: October 11th 2007
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CORAL BAY - 150km south of Exmouth and 1200km north of Perth On the 23rd of September we woke early (around 7am), packed up our stuff and said our goodbyes to the lovely camp hosts - who reminded me again about the dangers of snakes.
Safely in our van we cruised back to Exmouth to pick up supplies and fuel before carrying on south to Coral Bay. About 15mins later I saw something out of the corner of my eye in the ocean but ignored it. Ten seconds later Maria shouted “WHALE” at me forcing me to pull over J
We could both see him quite clearly in the distance and by chance we had pulled over next to a dirt track leading away from the road towards the shore. We drove down in (a little too fast now that I look back on it) hoping to get a better view. The track came out right by the waters edge - perfect!
Seeing the whale/s (we’re not sure how many there were) was captivating even from this distance. We tried to get photos and video which would do them justice but nothing really did. The whales were
breaching and playing about for about 15mins until they had gone out past the horizon.
Being on our own isolated bit of beach and seeing these huge animals not just coming up for air but flying out of the water really was special and put us both in top moods - the rest of the drive down to Coral Bay just flew by.
We parked a massive 10 metres from the beach and spent the rest of the morning sunbathing and snorkelling in the bay. The coral here was fantastic. Better than up at Cape Range imo - still part of Ningaloo Reef but much less windy.
After lunch we walked down the beach for about 20mins (our first real exercise in days!) to a shallower piece of water called the Reef Shark Reserve, hoping to see some sharks. As we got closer we could see the black shapes circling in the water. There were about 100 sharks in all, between 3 and 5 feet long. They were White Tipped Reef Sharks and were fed in this natural “nursery” daily but didn’t always show up. The water was so shallow and they came so close to
Ad on bike
My first bike of the trip so far - look how happy I am!! the shore that it was a little bit more than just a little bit scary. I was tempted to give Maria a shove towards the water but thought she’d never forgive me. Very cool experience indeed. We chatted to a bloke a few days later who said that he had been in the water thigh deep with them all circling around them. Apparently they very rarely attack humans. On our own though and without this knowledge we didn’t take that chance.
We snorkelled some more that day and generally had a mess about on the beach before driving 12km out of town to a roadside camping/rest stop thingey. Either that for free or pay the $32 to stay in the only campsite at CB. An easy decision.
24th September Up again at 7am we were at CB by 8am and we browsed around the local Tourism place and decided to book ourselves onto the Quad bike and Snorkelling tour.
Just us, the Guide and an Essex girl called Pandora. She was travelling Oz on an organised tour bus which was stopping at all the main places. The rest of her tour group went out to
try and find Manta Rays.
The quads were 500cc, 4x4 beasts and I was expecting great things. We started off very slowly and Maria soon got the hang of things, Pandora took a little longer and I just wanted to go faster! We went along custom built quad runs through the dunes for a while before getting onto a beach and opening them up which was fun (but still not fast enough) We stopped and our guide, a cool South African guy called Dave said the tide was too high to get round on the beach and we were going into the dunes at the back which had no tracks there (they were strictly off limits apparently) We made it through though and stopped at our first little snorkel stop. A small lagoon type cove thing. Dave saw a turtle and we rushed into the water.
Here I had the most amazing experience of my trip in WA. We swam and dived down with 3 loggerhead turtles for about 10 mins. Imagine total silence underwater and this really old, totally natural graceful underwater dinosaur gliding along next to you above the corals below. Fantastic.
More quadding, another
dive and a trip up to the highest point in CB before heading back. Dave took photos throughout the morning, underwater aswell. Pandora ordered a copy of the CD and said she would send us a copy when she gets home.
We kept the fins and snorkelled for the rest of the day a paradise beach, which as the name suggests was absolutely gorgeous - no more turtles though I’m afraid L
25th September We were having such a good time we stayed another day at CB. We wrote post cards, relaxed and read our books. We looked for the sharks again but they didn’t show up. We watched the sun set over the bay and generally thought how ace it was here and how lucky we were not to be back home (sorry guys) 😉
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