15 March 2011 – Exmouth, WA (2 backlogged entries)
G’Day, Y’all!
(Below: Exmouth sunrise, from my "free" campsite)
The insides of airports and bus stations aren’t exactly the exciting images by which I’d want to remember my journeys (or have them viewed by others), so I’ll skip the details—if you’ve never been to an airport or rode on a bus, you’ll have to use your imagination. I will include here, however, that to accomplish this 2 day journey, I experienced nearly every sort of overland transport offered in Australia, just getting from one side of the country to the other, in the following order: local bus, regional bus, trolly, metro, shuttle, airplane, local bus, train, and Greyhound bus (“The Bus to Hell”, the only bus running from Perth to Broome, 18 hours, full to the brim with backpackers, mining workers, and large families on holiday (always including at least 2 crying babies each)).
My reasons for coming to Exmouth were to catch me a whale shark (or at least snorkel alongside one) and to meet up with my second WWOOF volunteer host. It’s funny how things turn out, you know? I ended up doing neither of these, and had a blast!
I was dropped off at the edge-of-town bus stop at 1:30 am and all of the businesses had been closed for 8 hours at that point, so I got a free night of camping at the nearest caravan park, woo! After a "balmy" night shared with the stars and dozens of mozzies, I awoke to a fantastic sunrise filled with the raucous calls of the little rosellas (beautiful white parrots), snooping emus, and then sudden sweltering heat as the sun inched up in the sky.
Day 2: Navy Pier Dive. So sorry there are no photos of this! My first SCUBA dive in Australia was fantastic (although decidedly the most expensive dive I will ever do). Let's just say that this place is the #6 Shore Dive in the world for a very good reason. We got special permission from the Navy Base to enter the pier (I was only disappointed that there were no active submarines to be seen, hehe), where our little group splashed down among huge schools of fishies, hung out with a few 8-footer snoozing reef sharks, and had some adventurous encounters with the refrigerator-size potato cod! But I thought the best part of the dive was the pier pilings themselves, which were COVERED...no, more than that, PILED with enormous and colorful sponges and masses of brilliant tunicates! There wasn't much coral down below the pier, of course, but the fauna made it an interesting transition from the California waters.
Next up, I was ready to go find me a whale shark...and wasn't it time for me to be heading over to my WWOOF site? After being in town for 2 days and having lots of splashy, sunshine fun, I realized that neither of these was going to happen. I met up with Jim, the owner of "Wilderness Island", an Eco-Retreat on an island in the Exmouth Gulf, who's mission is to give visitors a true “wilderness” experience while teaching them the benefits of no-hassle, eco-friendly “luxury” principles, such as(Above, huge termite mounds and scorching terrain at Cape Range NP. Left, wind turbines left down after the cyclones)
non-fossil-fuel cooking, composting, organic gardening, etc. It turned out that his island retreat had been mowed over by the 2 recent cyclones (hurricanes), and that the rebuilding materials had not come in yet. “So,” he said, “Enjoy Exmouth!” At first I wasn’t super stoked to spend an idle week in a tiny town 100 miles from anything, without any transport options (being the tourist low season), and where temperatures daily soar above 100 degrees, but things always have a way of working themselves out, you know?
18 March 2011 - Exmouth/Coral Bay
My week has been filled thusly:
To be honest, I did some serious pool-side sitting during the first couple of days—I came up here specifically FOR the tropical heat, after all! The idea was to spend as much time in the ocean as possible, but the pool suited nicely, too. The big draw in Exmouth, as may already know, is the whale sharks! There were said to be whale sharks all around the peninsula, but I had to make the difficult decision to not meet any of them. While I'm sure that snorkeling 15 feet above the largest fish on Earth would be a great thrill, I wasn't sold by the $400 price tag, and felt that seeing them behind glass at the Georgia Aquarium was enough of an encounter as I would/could pay for!
After a few nights of "free" camping at the caravan park, I got caught by the caretaker one morning when I slept in, so I spent the rest of the week staying at a backpackers, which was conveniently attached to a fancy resort (yay, pretend luxury!!). That was where I met Christa, a lovely gal from Vancouver, a solo traveler like myself, but which the important distinction of having a car. We had agreed that 6 days is way way too long to stay in Exmouth after having exhausted all of the beaches, dive spots and pools, so we checked out early and drove down to Coral Bay, about 170 km south of Exmouth.
(Above: Why did the emu cross the road? To Monitor and 'Roo!....maybe the heat's gotten to me, hehe. Below, the adorable yet raucous Little Rosellas, aka, alarm-clock birds)
Coral Bay was fantastic!! I officially recommend this town to everybody traveling in Western Australia. It was about as tiny as Exmouth, but with some very important and amazing differences! First of all, all of the town stuff is actually located withing hopping distance of the beach (so it is filled with very smart people, haha). While there is only one backpackers, one caravan park, one resort, and one dive shop, everything there is coordinated around happy hour, and everybody knows everybody. I was only there for 36 hours, but met so many awesome people. Maybe it helped that we showed up on St. Patrick's Day? So by the time we settled in and booked our dive trip, it was time to party! After living in Monterey for so long, I forgot that St. Patrick's Day is Internationally celebrated!! The other reason Coral Bay totally rocks is that it is 100% fossil-fuel-free! Except for the cars and boats (many of which run on natural gas), they operate on solar and wind energy. Definitely worth my patronage :)
Coral Bay Dives: Again, I really wish I had photos of these dives, but that would just make you all too jealous, right? So on Friday morning Christa and I joined about 12 other visitors at the Ningaloo Dive Shop ans we set out at a leisurely 8:30am for a full day of diving and manta ray snorkeling!! I can't remember the site names, of course, but the first dive had us down to just 11-13m in the Inner Reef.
WOW, this place was soooo pristine and sooooo chock-a-block full of corals, like swimming inside an aquarium, but better!! On the first, we saw lots of nudibranchs and pipefish, and little juvenile boxfish that were sooo cute! On the second dive, we patrolled a Gray Reef Shark cleaning station, and although the crappy viz gave the ambiace of a foggy Jack-The-Ripper kind of day, we saw several nice big sharks, which were not in the least interested in us. The sharks were great and all, but the best part was that I found SPIDER CONCHS, some bigger than my open hand, and with big heavy spines!!!! They are soooo cool.. Trust me, I know cool snails. I was interested by the fact that each one I found was somewhat isolated on little sandy patches in huge valleys of corals...I guess they really had their work cut out for them to ever run into each other!
We spent our surface interval between dives hunting down some Manta Rays to chase about. En route, we spotted a solo bottlenose dolphin and were for a moment convince he, too, wanted us to snorkel and chase him about (turned out, no.). The spotter plane helped us track down a couple of rays in a matter of minutes (being that there were dozens of resident coastal manta rays here, another reason to come to Coral Bay!!!), and before I knew it, we were gliding along in the shadows of two female rays. They were not feeding or doing their famous acrobatics, but I was just glad that these were not inclined to zoom straight at my head (like my initial hilariously terrifying manta ray encounter in Costa Rica). So we just floated along and dove down to get a pilot-fish-eye view of the rays' identifying markings on their bellies. It was a breathtaking experience, both figuratively and quite literally (they stayed at about 17ft).
And best of all, as we paddled around (there were like 6 of us), another great sea beast came to say hello! Suddenly I spotted another humongous object swimming toward us on the seafloor, to find a large brown Shovel-Nose Ray! They're called rays, of course, but in fact they are SHARKS! Ok, very chill, genial sharks, but nonetheless! Imagine if you will, a big fat brown shark, and instead of a mean toothy face, stick on a flat, triangle head like a stingray (see right).
Next up, Northern Territory! I catch the bus tonight and will soon reappear in Darwin!
To be honest, I did some serious pool-side sitting during the first couple of days—I came up here specifically FOR the tropical heat, after all! The idea was to spend as much time in the ocean as possible, but the pool suited nicely, too. The big draw in Exmouth, as may already know, is the whale sharks! There were said to be whale sharks all around the peninsula, but I had to make the difficult decision to not meet any of them. While I'm sure that snorkeling 15 feet above the largest fish on Earth would be a great thrill, I wasn't sold by the $400 price tag, and felt that seeing them behind glass at the Georgia Aquarium was enough of an encounter as I would/could pay for!
After a few nights of "free" camping at the caravan park, I got caught by the caretaker one morning when I slept in, so I spent the rest of the week staying at a backpackers, which was conveniently attached to a fancy resort (yay, pretend luxury!!). That was where I met Christa, a lovely gal from Vancouver, a solo traveler like myself, but which the important distinction of having a car. We had agreed that 6 days is way way too long to stay in Exmouth after having exhausted all of the beaches, dive spots and pools, so we checked out early and drove down to Coral Bay, about 170 km south of Exmouth.(Above: Why did the emu cross the road? To Monitor and 'Roo!....maybe the heat's gotten to me, hehe. Below, the adorable yet raucous Little Rosellas, aka, alarm-clock birds)
Coral Bay Dives: Again, I really wish I had photos of these dives, but that would just make you all too jealous, right? So on Friday morning Christa and I joined about 12 other visitors at the Ningaloo Dive Shop ans we set out at a leisurely 8:30am for a full day of diving and manta ray snorkeling!! I can't remember the site names, of course, but the first dive had us down to just 11-13m in the Inner Reef.
WOW, this place was soooo pristine and sooooo chock-a-block full of corals, like swimming inside an aquarium, but better!! On the first, we saw lots of nudibranchs and pipefish, and little juvenile boxfish that were sooo cute! On the second dive, we patrolled a Gray Reef Shark cleaning station, and although the crappy viz gave the ambiace of a foggy Jack-The-Ripper kind of day, we saw several nice big sharks, which were not in the least interested in us. The sharks were great and all, but the best part was that I found SPIDER CONCHS, some bigger than my open hand, and with big heavy spines!!!! They are soooo cool.. Trust me, I know cool snails. I was interested by the fact that each one I found was somewhat isolated on little sandy patches in huge valleys of corals...I guess they really had their work cut out for them to ever run into each other!
We spent our surface interval between dives hunting down some Manta Rays to chase about. En route, we spotted a solo bottlenose dolphin and were for a moment convince he, too, wanted us to snorkel and chase him about (turned out, no.). The spotter plane helped us track down a couple of rays in a matter of minutes (being that there were dozens of resident coastal manta rays here, another reason to come to Coral Bay!!!), and before I knew it, we were gliding along in the shadows of two female rays. They were not feeding or doing their famous acrobatics, but I was just glad that these were not inclined to zoom straight at my head (like my initial hilariously terrifying manta ray encounter in Costa Rica). So we just floated along and dove down to get a pilot-fish-eye view of the rays' identifying markings on their bellies. It was a breathtaking experience, both figuratively and quite literally (they stayed at about 17ft).
And best of all, as we paddled around (there were like 6 of us), another great sea beast came to say hello! Suddenly I spotted another humongous object swimming toward us on the seafloor, to find a large brown Shovel-Nose Ray! They're called rays, of course, but in fact they are SHARKS! Ok, very chill, genial sharks, but nonetheless! Imagine if you will, a big fat brown shark, and instead of a mean toothy face, stick on a flat, triangle head like a stingray (see right).Next up, Northern Territory! I catch the bus tonight and will soon reappear in Darwin!
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