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Sandy Bay, Exmouth
One of the beautiful beaches on the Exmouth peninsula. After sitting on a bus for 20.5 hours, I was finally at
Exmouth! At 5:00 in the bloody morning!
I had boarded the bus in Perth after one final week...it was fun at first to watch the scenery go by and think, I just drove this a week ago. After a while I just got annoyed that the trip was taking so long and stopped looking out the window. And after way too much time on buses, I finally arrived.
I quickly bonded with four other fellow female travelers (Hello Susan, Andrea, Claudia and Rachele!). As I couldn't locate my hostel (good thing I didn't actually have a reservation), I went with them to the Potshot to check in. The group of us (plus a guy who we called Bob Dylan) hung out over the next few days and had quite a blast. We hired a Ute (pickup truck) and drove by the marina to pick up a 3kg box of prawns, then continued on to explore the rest of the Exmouth peninsula. Our first stop the lighthouse, where we had great views of the beautiful landscape and the water. Then was Yardie Creek Gorge, where we had a lovely walk along the top of the gorge. Afterwards we went for a relaxing lunch and swim at Sandy Bay, which definitely joins the list of my favourite beaches. Next was Turquoise Bay, where we snorkeled on the drift current over the Ningaloo Reef. Bob Dylan was there was well and showed me some amazing reefs further out from shore. I couldn't get over the beauty of the reef and the colourful fish everywhere. It was beautiful. Just beautiful.
Finally we decided we'd head back towards Exmouth. We feasted that night on prawns and grilled veggies. The next day we returned the ute and I booked a tour with
Ningaloo Reef Dreaming as did Claudia. And the rest of the day was devoted to searching for a decent cup of coffee (try the Organic Coffee Company beyond the supermarkets), changing hostels (I finally figured out that the Blue Reef Backpackers was at the Aspen caravan park, and they had only existed under that name for a week...no wonder none of the locals had heard of it!), and spending time soaking up the sun at the beach with Andrea and Susan. That night we polished off the rest of those prawns.
Whalesharks!!! Claudia and I were up early in hopes of seeing these magnificent, very large creatures. After a practice run in the water, the crew announced we had sighted a shark! So off we went, and we took turns swimming with a 6 meter male shark for 52 minutes...then another one was spotted! We swam with this baby female (only 2.5 meters!!) for 48 minutes before she tired of us. Whale sharks are amazing creatures...and I'm so happy I got to see them! And I was super excited that I had made a good choice with my tour...Reef Dreaming has its own spotter plane...other people I had spoken to only got to swim with a couple of sharks for 5-10 minutes maximum because more than one boat had to share the shark. I'm sure any encounter with a whale shark would've been amazing, but getting to jump back in the water and swim with the same shark was really something special. At one point, the little female had dived and we started heading back towards the boat, but then she came up again on the other side of me...I felt like I was all alone in the water with her...it was amazing! Claudia and I also got to try a free dive, and our dive instructor fitted us with the gear and slowly took us down to 4 metres. It was beautiful and really cool, except for the fact that my ears wouldn't pop, which meant quite a bit of pain. But I still really enjoyed it.
Yay Exmouth! I loved the area..and I'm sad I missed out on Coral Bay, which has wonderful snorkeling as well. The area's on my list of spots I want to return to!
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