Today we packed up, did a bit of souvenir shopping and said goodbye to Coral Bay. We continued our southern journey leaving the Ningaloo Coast for the last time and arriving in Carnarvon just before the rain started - our first rain since Kakadu. The winds that came with the rain are definitely the strongest that we have encountered this trip. We hunkered down for the afternoon at the Discovery Park Carnarvon for a bit of down time.
Today we went on a manta ray snorkeling tour. We saw lots of animals including turtles, fish, coral and manta rays. They provided wetsuits which is good because I get cold in the ocean easily. We met some other kids from... Germany! and did lots of snorkeling. Afterwards we got hot chips.
Today we did a manta ray tour where we first had to get wetsuits before we left. After that we took a bus to the boat. Then we took the boat to our snorkelling test area. We had to do a snorkelling test before we could swim with manta rays to make sure our gear worked, we were able to swim, and to pull ourself back onto the boat while it was moving.
After that we got back in the boat and left to go find the manta rays. When we found one we had to learn how to respectfully get into the water to see the manta ray. We had to get into groups of ten because then the mantra ray would not feel overwhelmed by too many people. When in the water we had to stay 3 metres from the tail and 2 metres from the sides of the matra ray. But since the manta ray stayed at the bottom we could get a little closer. When we got in the water we saw the manta ray - it was BIG (4m wide)! We got in a few times to see the same manta ray because there were different snorkelling groups.
Later while waiting for lunch to be ready we saw a logger head turtle! Much later we went snorkelling again. We saw two turtles - one was a green sea turtle they other I do not know. We saw a white tip reef shark under some coral that had one of the turtles higher up on the coral. When we got back to our campsite we had hot chips.
I got up early to watch my first and last sunrise from Cape Range. While walking along the beach I saw lots of birds and bluespotted fantail rays in the water. I was about to turn back when I saw a shadow in the water. I climbed up the sand dune in order to get a better look through the water. It was a 1m shark of some sort. Later looking through the ID book at the Exmouth visitors centre I think it was a type of dogfish(?). No matter what its called it was very cool to see it swimming along the shoreline.
After all that excitement I headed back to camp to help pack up and get ready to move further south along the Ningaloo coast. First we stopped in Exmouth again to grab supplies before heading to Coral Bay.
We rolled into Coral Bay after lunch and stayed at the People Park Coral Bay caravan park, which was just across the road from the beach. As soon as we had our site set up the kids and I went for a swim/snorkel but visibility was low so did not stay in for long. Instead we messed around jumping into the water from the sand bank into a deep drop-off.
Then everyone had showers to get the last several days of salt water out of our hair!
