A lazy day today, we are staying here for two whole nights!
Activity of the morning was walking out to the boat taking us out into the Nangoola reef .
Having paddled out to meet the boat we were soon settled with the other visitors all anxious to get onto the reef. Our skipper, Jessie, assisted by crewman Liam went through some safety stuff and then we were off.
Almost immediately we were floating over beautiful corals; lots of different varieties, what it looks like is its name e.g. brain coral, cabbage coral, stag coral etc. The waterfall the reef is green so the corals, mostly green, blue or grey coloured lost some of their colour. They were amazing though!
We floated over a massive section of reef called airs rock, a limestone structure covered in different corals. Very impressive.
There were several opportunities to snorkel, but we decided to stay dry today and watch from the boat. It had a glass bottom so we got quite a good view of a hiss that came near the boat. Several fish of different sizes came to peer at us through the floor, not sure who was watching whom at some points. Fish are quite inquisitive so the boat was a source of interest to them too. We sailed over to the turtle sanctuary, where is is a lot of sea grass to tempt them. It worked as we saw a number of turtles, some coming quite close to the boat. It was lovely to see them in the sea, reminding us of the babies we saw at the rescue centre in Sri Lanka. They were really cute too.
Returning back to the beach we had a paddle back to shore, surprising how warm the water was and how hot it was having been out at sea this morning.
This afternoon we decided to explore Coral Bay, like Monkey Mia, it didn't take very long, just two camp grounds, a supermarket, bottle shop, tour operator, bakery and a bar. Just about all you need really! People here tend to be fairly self sufficient.
Later a walk on the beach and probably a paddle and that's another lovely WA day.