Monday, 13 August 2012

Week 11 – Ningaloo Reef to Carnarvon


So the plan is to get up early and ring Coral Bay at 7.30am to snare one of the 6 spots that don’t get prebooked.  Up we get, pack up, ready to roll….no reception!  We drive for an hour and a half to the turnoff…left to Coral Bay, right to Exmouth and still we are unable to make a phone call.

We decided to head to Exmouth, given it was bigger and the council had opened up an overflow around the showground so worst case scenario we could camp there.   About 15 kms up the road we snare a single bar f coverage and after 3 U-turns trying to find the spot again we ring Coral Bay and as luck would have it snae a spot for the next 4 nights.

So in Coral Bay we find ourselves, mid morning and the most gorgeous turquoise coloured water in front of us….home for a few days and as it would turn out definitely a highlight.

The beauty of this place is you literally put on the snorkel and mask and walk off the beach and are swimming in amongst hundreds of fish and coral.  It is a protected marine park and so no fishing is allowed.  The reef finishes about a km offshore where the breakers are and we got to experience the thrill of the underwater world on a glass bottom boat where we snorkeled in two spots, including hanging out with a turtle for a bit, a drift snorkel from around the point where the current brings you back in to the bay and just off the beach itself.  He water was cold after you had been in a while but the experience was awesome.

Alex and Lachie both had a go, and while Lachie’s snorkeling effort resulted in more of a comedy act as he enjoyed tripping over his flippers  and walking around the sand with his mask and snorkel, Alex got the hang of it and stayed out with us for ages, experiencing another world.

From Coral Bay we snared a site for 2 nights in Exmouth.  It turns out there is not much to do in Exmouth other than drive around the tip of the Cape and down through the Cape National Park, which while beautiful we didn’t find a spot as nice as Coral Bay.  We did spend the day at Turquoise Bay with more snorkeling and a walk along the beach that was nice but me thinks we were totally spoiled by Coral Bay.

Exmouth in hindsight was a bit of a calamity.  We arrived to be told we were on a double slab site…making it quite difficult to peg down the tent in the concrete.  I got totally confused at which way our tent went and we proceeded to turn the trailer around in circles, doing donuts if you like on the concrete pad, all the time pushing the trailer as I had un hitched it…turns out the right position was where I had backed it in the first time.  And then finally a bigger kid pushed Alex into the fence in the playground.  He bounced and he and Lachie collided heads leaving Alex with a black eye and what we feared was a cracked tooth as he was feeling the cold every time he breathed and drunk.

Now for a real Exmouth highlight.  We did have fresh prawns from the best seafood shop in the world.  Spend $30, get $10 off and he split our spend over two days letting us walk out with $25 of fresh king prawns for dinner night one and $15 of green prawns for a curry on night two…how good is that, good old fashioned service, cheap, great quality and we ate prawns two nights running…gotta love that!

No comments:

Post a Comment