Journey up North to Coral Bay and the Ningaloo Reef

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Tuesday 17th March

We started our long journey up the West coast today to Coral Bay. I met the group who i'd be travelling up with in Perth; two German girls Mira and Sabine, Claire from Liverpool and Miya from Taiwan. Our first overnight stop was 10 hours away in Kalbarri. We set off at 8am and after familiarising ourselves with the bus which was to effectively be our home for the next few days we stopped 2 hours later at the Pinnacles Desert. The Pinnacles are a strange sight, it looks almost like a giant desert graveyard. The Aborignal story behind it is that the desert was sinking sand and any man who walked across it would perish as they sank into the yellow sand and the Pinnacles are the men's fingers! After wandering through the desert we jumped back on the bus to finish our long day's journey up the coast. Just outside of Kalbarri we stopped at a look out point called 'Pot Alley' where there was an awesome view of the red coastal gorges. We were all pretty hungry by the time we arrived in the small coastal town so headed straight out to Finlay's Fish BBQ where we feasted on fish and chips!

Wednesday 18th March

It was another early start this morning as we headed out of Kalbarri to it's National Park where we were going to see it's famous gorges. The 'Z Bend' offered us a beautiful look out point through the giant gorge and then a great trek down scrambling and climbing over big rocks to get to the river at the bottom. From the Z Bend we then headed over to another of Kalbarri Park's famous landmarks 'Nature's Window'. The views were so beautiful and so vast, just like on some of the roads you can turn 360degrees and not see a single thing. After leaving Nature's Window we headed north again towards the Stromatolites, i'm afraid i missed the explanation as to what these were as i was desperately trying to shake off the hundreds of flies that had decided to start calling my back 'home'. The next stop was Shell Beach, it was beautifully white but a little painful to walk on! About 30km south of our next overnight stop in Denham, Shark Bay, we ran into a 'spot of bother' on the beach when our bus driver, Jared, decided he wanted to show us the best possible views...subsequently we spent the next 4 hours trying to dig our bus out of the sand! A great adventure at no extra cost! Although a couple of the girls did start to get worried when the tide started coming and and the sun started to set! We had to run back to the main road and stop a car and ask them if they would take a message to the hostel in Denham so that someone could come and rescue us as there was no phone signal whatsoever! Eventually a big 4WD made it's way down to the beach and drove us the remaining 30km into Denham. We were the talk of the tiny town, and Denham's only pub had stayed open late for us so that we could have some dinner, which was obviously much appreciated after working up one heck of an appetite!

Thursday 19th March

Jared had to return to our sunken bus in the morning with a big tow truck so the girls and i were very kindly offered spots on another tour company's bus so that we didn't miss the morning feed of the wild dolphins at Monkey Mia. About seven dolphins came in to say hello this morning and while we were sat on the beach waiting for Jared to return with the bus we saw turtles and sharks and a big big splash of a shark attacking it's prey about 200m from the shore - a big tiger shark catching a late breakfast! When Jared returned with the bus we said farewell to the German girls as they were stopping for a couple of nights in Monkey Mia and getting the next bus up to Coral Bay in a couple of days. It was just Jared, Claire and myself on the long and very straight journey back out of the Shark Bay region and up the coast to Coral Bay. We stopped off at a supermarket en route and loaded our esky with beers and laughed, sang and drank our way up to the Ningaloo Reef.
I fell in love with Coral Bay as soon as we pulled into the beautiful little town. It was buzzing with energy from the people who were excited about what their stay might unfold. Jared, Claire and I made a trip down to the beach where we toasted to the most stunning sunset i have ever seen.

Friday 20th March

Woke up early again this morning (i'm starting to wonder when my last sleep in was...!) so that Jared could take Claire and me snorkeling. Just a short swim out from the shore and you are hovering over beautiful corals, fishes, rays and even sharks! It was this morning that i had my first, of what was to be many, encounters with Reef Sharks! We enjoyed a very relaxing afternoon on the beach after i had booked onto my two tours for the weekend. Saturday - A dive trip and swimming with the Manta Rays, and for Sunday (fingers crossed as i was the first person to put my name down for it and they needed six people to run the trip) a wildlife tour where we would go looking for Whale Sharks to swim with.

Saturday 21st March

My Manta Ray tour left the dive centre at 8am and i had a great group. We set out around the bay and had a quick brief on how to swim with the Manta Rays. Mantas are at Coral Bay all year round, but as March-April is when the coral spawns there was lots of food for them, so hopefully we would be able to watch them feed while barrell rolling. This also meant that we wouldn't have to swim very hard to keep up with them! We all got very excited when we heard that we'd spotted our first Manta and quickly got ready to get in the water. Our first Manta was HUGE! She has a 4m wing span and was clearly very hungry The skipper said that he heard lots of excited squeals coming from our snorkels while we were in the water! We were very lucky that our group was small and there wasn't another boat to share the Manta with as there's only a certain amount of people allowed in the water at any one time. Then before we knew it we were surrounded by not one or two Mantas but seven! We swam with three different Mantas, two girls and one boy - here is a link to the video we took of one of the Manta Rays barrel rolling '

'. The Manta Ray tour also included two dives and i just couldn't wait to put an air tank on my back again and sink back down to the bottom of the ocean for an hour or so. It was such a beautiful experience floating in and amongst the giant corals of the Ningaloo Reef keeping the fish and sharks company. After an exhausting day we headed back to the hostel where we met up with the German girls again and ordered in a pizza. Needless to say i went to bed very excited after getting confirmation that the wildlife trip would be going ahead in the morning.

Sunday 22nd March

I woke up with butterflies in my tummy today after my third dream about swimming with the Whale Sharks. I joined the group at the dive centre again and thought positive thoughts all the way out of the bay hoping that today Mother Nature would be kind to us. It was the same deal as yesterday except our Whark Shark breifing was considerably longer and after this we had to play the waiting game with our fingers crossed while we waited for the pilot in our spotter plane who was circling the reef to come back with some good news. Not even 20 minutes into our journey out of the reef our pilot told us that he did indeed have some good news, but that he also had some bad news. The good news was that he had found not one but two Whale Sharks, the bad news was that they were four miles out of our boundary. This really fired us up and no longer than 10 minutes later the engines of the boat kicked into gear, a sure fire sign that we had ourselves a Whale Shark! We then spent the next 15 minutes trying to keep our breakfast down and put our wetsuits on at the same time - a trick i would challenge anyone to master! We eventually saw our spotter plane doing circles about our Whale Shark and over the speaker system our skipper counted down 400m, 300m, 200m, 100m, swimmer GO!!! And in this video you can see for yourselves what happened next as i started filming before i had even jumped off the back of the boat! '

'. It was the most magical experience and even now i find it hard to find the words to do justice in describing it. I called him 'Reggie' and i was lucky enough to swim with Reggie another two times. All of the excitement had made me forget how seasick i felt but i was quickly reminded as soon as i stepped back onto the boat. I lay down on the floor and closed my eyes spending the next hour or so on our trip back to the bay thinking - WOW. It was such a great way to finish a great trip up North and it is without a doubt, the coolest thing i have ever done.

Lots of love from Coral Bay, WA

Danielle xx

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Comments

[Elaine]

Dani, How awesome! Living vicariously through you! Love you!

[Richard Birchall]

Stromatolites
Hi Danielle, I'm so pleased you'r having a good time. It is good to read about your travels. You really do have a natural talent for writing them up in a most interesting way. Stromatolites in Shark Bay, Australia, are about 2800million years old----even older than Grandad! They consist of alternate layers of fossils from blue-green algae and limestone. Blue-green algae were the first forms of life to leave fossils and, as I'm sure you know, limestone is formed mainly from fossils containing calcium carbonate. Take care and enjoy, as ever, Grandad.