Happy birthday Pat and welcome to the 2nd quarter
century of your life. 🙂
This morning after breakfast we uprooted ourselves and moved
the van into a holding parking spot. We had to meet outside the dive shop in Coral Bay at 8am for our Manta Ray and Turtle Snorkel tour.
After signing up with all the necessary paperwork (which there seems to be more and more of these days, as companies cover their, umm, soft spots 🙂 ).
We got all our gear handed to us, flippers, mask snorkel and wetsuit, and a bag to put it all into. We eventually got on a bus to take us to the marina and our waiting boat at about 8:30.
There were about 19 on our tour, 6 French, 4 Germans and one
Swiss girl, from all of the accents we have heard in this part of the world it seems there are more international tourists than Australians! This is the girl from Switzerlands 5th visit to the area, and most Australians haven’t even heard of it!
They split us into two groups and it wasn’t long before we were in the water having a trial dive. So the crew could see the capabilities of this bunch, whether we could swim or not for starters!
The swim was good, we got to see a lot of coral, and one group saw a turtle. The corals here aren’t as colourful as the Great Barrier
Reef, but are fascinating in their own way, bursts of colour on the ends of their long gone relatives exoskeletons. The fish that live around the reefs are even more colourful than the coral, their colours are amazing, with every vibrant colour you can think of, and then some.
After a good time in the water we were picked up and taken outside the reef area into the open ocean. There we saw at least 12 Hump Back whales. A few of them were putting on great displays of breaching and another couple were swimming along smacking their flippers onto the water surface. As whale sightings go, and we have now been lucky enough to have many around the globe, this was pretty good.
Our next stop was for manta rays, in a bay that had a 4km opening
in the coral reefs, and according to our dive guides, drew a strong current of fresh krill and the like that the manta rays feed on. It wasn’t long before the boats captain had seen about 4 swimming in one area. Our dive leader jumped/slid into the water (you don’t jump in, that scares the rays away). We were in the 2nd group to go in, the first group had a few people pull out after not very long in the water, so we got to get in early. It was a bit of a challenge to keep up with the Manta ray, it swam fairly fast and with the size of the group in the water it was a bit hectic. I managed to get around
most and swam for a very long time following the Ray around and watching it as it feed and just cruised around. Deb got caught up in the crowd and as a result had problems with her mask. While she attempted to get settled her mask came free and before she knew it, it was gone. So she went back to the boat. I was unaware of all this and had the most amazing time following the Manta Ray. Several times it turned back towards me and I had to stop swimming to maintain my 2m from it. Once it swam back around me then under me, as it did I swam with it for ages. I stretched my arms out to get an idea of how big it was, and I guessed it was at least 1 ½ times the distance from my right finger tips to my left, maybe 3+m wide. We were eventually told to go back to the boat so we could move onto another area.
This was when I found out about Deb’s misadventures, but she
was so glad I had a great time, this was what I wanted to do, and she could see I had had a great time.
We then moved to an area that was a maze of coral, Deb said she wasn’t going to go in, the experience with the Ray had put her off. But she encouraged me to go in, so I did. After a while in the water following the guide, I saw a turtle swim by, so I followed it. I swam all the way back to our boat, and I hoped that Deb might be able to see it as it swam by, but I couldn’t see her anywhere on board. So I let it go and returned to the main group, taking in all the colour and spectacle of life on the reef. When I got back on board the boat, I found that Deb had been taken out by one the crew, and had her own personal tour. She even saw a 2m+ reef shark.
The tour came to and end and we were back at the car by 1:15pm. With a quick change we were on the road by 1:30pm on our way towards the Fortescue Roadhouse for the night. We took a short cut back to the North West Coastal Highway, via Bullara, which is north of the Coral Bay turn off on the way towards Exmouth. About 10km before the turn off we got an “Engine System Failure” warning light come up on the dash. This wasn’t good. I pulled over
as soon as I could and we got the manual out to see what it might be. But the manual didn’t shed any light on it, so I drove on until we got a mobile signal and rang Land Rover Roadside Assist. I
spoke to a guy by the name of Ben, he was so helpful (of course!) and after running through a number of diagnostic tests with us eventually told us it seemed to be a non-critical problem (the car was running just fine, no weird noises , groans, or bumps, the temp was fine and no smoke either) and it would be OK to continue, but if things changed to contact Roadside Assist again (and to call into the Broome Land Rover Rep when we got there for them to have a look at it.)
So we headed off again and with no more issues we eventually got to the Onslow turn-off free camping area at 6pm, just in time to set up for the night and watch a magnificent Pilbara sunset.
Tomorrow we head to Karratha, about 220km away, for a few
casual days.
