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Published: December 5th 2008
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Up to this point the west coast has been pretty good but this part of it was spectacular. Coral Bay is a small town actually owned by i believe two famalies. It is a great spot to do some snorkeling. About 50 m from the beach you can swim out to the reef and watch millions of fish swim about. And if you get into the current you can just float and let it take you back to shore. We saw so many brillant fish. The coral is hard coral so not super colorful like the soft coral of the great barrier reef but the fish more than made up for it. So many different kinds, colorful ones from very small to very big. Also tons of mantarays. Of course i didn't have an underwater camera so i have no pictures of it sorry! That night we did some fishing off the shore. You have to stand in the water and i swear about every 10 minutes a big mantaray would swim by your feet. At one point Mark was actually right in the middle of 2 huge rays just hanging out. While we were fishing we were lucky to see
what we later found out was a Lionfish. Which acutally is very deadly. There were two of them close by our feet, (oh and as we traveled we found the only way to see really deadly scary things is by almost stepping on them). Anyway they are colorful fish with ribbon like fins coming out of everywhere. These ribbon things are spikes and with one poke you could be dead. We almost got too close but stuck by our rule-if it's super colorful and cool looking with rings it's probably deadly. The other thing to do here is swim with the big whale shark. It was really expensive so we deceided to wait and see about it in Exmouth our next location. I will say though we also were going to go on a fishing cruise and I wish we had of because out of all the other places we have seen, Coral bay area still had the coolest catches. Exmouth was another fabulous part of the coral coast and ningaloo marine park. The outer scenic part of exmouth is Cape Range nat park, and what a place to escape it all. It's all bush camping with only a long
drop, but the views are spectacular and the stars couldn't get any brighter. We headed first to almost the end of the park, checked out Yardie Creek Gorge where we saw cute wallabys and cool views. Then back up a bit to Osprey Bay for the night. This is an excellent camping spot, no shade, but right by the water. That night of course we went fishing and saw turtles and a pretty blue sting ray play around, but caught nothing. Did get to see a georgeous sunset though. In the morning we got up early with the sun and went out fishing again to use up the bait. I got bored so i went back to pack up, and about 5 mins later Mark comes running back carrying this gigantic snapper. Since we didn't have a cooler or anything we did the only thing we could, cooked it up for breakfast. It was delicious! The rest of the day we took advantage of all the fabulous snorkeling. We went to what's called the oyster stacks that are close to shore reefs and you can only swim over them during high tide. This was the best location, there were so
many fish and beautiful coral but we didn't stay too long. At one point i found myself swimming beside a reef shark so that freaked me out. And once again, no camera! Then we swam and snorkeled at beautiful turquise bay and some other spots. It was a great day, but totally wore us out and we were in bed by 8:00pm. The next day we headed back into Exmouth and signed up for swimming with Whale Sharks. The day didn't turn out as nice as the other days had been but we were pumped for the adventure. Unfortunetly when we got out onto the choppy water i got sea sick. We did manage to swim with them three times. The first time we got an amazing side on view and the last time we were tralling behind then all of a sudden the shark turned around and we found ourselves directly in front of it. It was a pretty cool experience! Once again no pictures. The next day we packed up and deceided to part with our tag along. We said our short goodbyes and were on our way again. This time just the two us for once. It
felt pretty good to finally, truly, be on our own adventure.
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