Ningaloo Dreaming

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I had a full day in Exmouth which gave me the chance to do one of the things I specifically came to Australia to do- scuba diving. Everyone in the world should try this at least once in their lives. Exmouth would be a good place to do it.

The day didn't start off too well as me and the other certified diver in the tour group tried to do pancakes for breakfast. Unfortunately, the gas-powered hot plate didn't light immediately, allowing gas to build up, and then suddenly WOOMPH towards her face. Bit of a shocker, that. Luckily it stopped just short of burning her face off, and so we went off to do our dives, her with a few hairs shorter than they used to be.

But anyway, we got picked up and put on a boat taking us to the dive site near a lighthouse. We did three dives in total, each being relatively shallow- no more than 14m. All three dives were similar in terms of overall appearance, being in an area of rocky, coral covered outcrops interspersed with sandy areas. There was a good variety of fish life and plenty of them. We were also lucky to see a number of larger marine animals, including two white-tip reef sharks, two sea snakes, a load of turtles (I lost count but apparently there were nine in total on one of the dives), a wobbegong/ carpet shark (strange name for a strange creature), and on the final dive a manta ray swooped across in front of us. Not a bad tally for three dives! Also, the manta ray sighting meant that, of my tour group, I saw the most manta rays, as neither of the people who saw extra ones on the scenic flight were on the dive, and the other person on the dive wasn't on the scenic flight! Haha!

After I came back I had a pretty chilled night, since diving takes it out of you when you aren't so used to it.

A slight downer on the day was that I somehow managed to catch a cold. So yeah, take pity on me!

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