Coral Bay - the summer holiday on our extended holiday!

 

What a beautiful part of the world! We were so glad that we ended up securing a booking here – we absolutely loved it. It felt like a summer holiday – while on our extended summer holiday! We were very lucky to be given a great site with lots of room and close to beach access.

The first two days we were blessed with magical beach weather – crystal blue water, 27 degrees and no wind!!! We took full advantage of the weather and spent the first afternoon and the whole of the second day on the beach. We set up the Cool Cabana, packed food for the day and spent the majority of our time snorkelling. On day two we got adventurous and snorkelled 350m off the beach to the white buoy where the glass bottom boat tours spend time. We swam past beautiful massive purple coral structures, brilliant blue coral antlers and amazing gardens of coral flowers. We had never seen coral like it - incredible! Far better than our Nth QLD Barrier Reef experience. We swam over manta rays (gripping hands so that we didn’t lose each other) and when we reached the buoy it was like being locked inside an aquarium. Hundreds of fish were swimming around us – from super large Spanish Mackerel to masses of tiny, brilliantly coloured fish. It was a ‘pinch me moment’ for us both. Andrew’s shivering inside his wetsuit top was the only reason to turn and head back to shore - whilst also conscious that we were now quite a long way out (Sippy was on the look out for much larger fish .. ala sharks ….) We were thrilled that we had conquered this swim – but were both quite glad when we were safely back on the beach. Later from the beach we watched dolphins swim right past where we were swimming earlier. Shame we didn’t snorkel past them.

That evening we enjoyed a Sippy BBQ and settled in to watch Australia versus Canada in the Women’s World Cup (Go Aussies defeating Canada 4-0 and proceeding to the Round of 16).

Day Three was overcast and a little windy, so we had a relaxing, late breakfast, a nice walk up to the headland and shared a bucket of Exmouth prawns with a beer at Bill’s Bar. We spent the afternoon catching up with blogs and Instagram reels and preparing to move on the next day. It rained quite heavily that night – only our second experience of rain since we had left home. Let’s hope it helps to bring the wildflowers out further down the coast.