exmouth

Bergerons in the canyon

as we got off the plane we realized 2 things. one, it was way hotter up in exmouth then it was in perth. and two, we were in the middle of f-ing nowhere. the airport, if you can call it that, was so small i can't even describe it. we got the keys to our rental car and drove off to our holiday apartment.

Emu!

exmouth is a small town (town? village?) on the beautiful ningaloo reef. i've been up this way before with john (3 years ago- coral bay)  but my parentals had never been. the "town" consists of a small shopping area with not one, but 2 IGA's directly across from each other, 3 restaurants, one mobile burger joint, a healthy cafe, a surf shop, 2 random clothing stores and lots of local Emus (woo!). that's pretty much it. it took all of 5 minutes to walk from our apartment to the centre of town. needless to say, there's not much to do there. which is fine, because ningaloo reef is amazing and what better excuse to explore?

unfortunately for us, the last weekend in october also happens to be the last weekend of the tourist season, and as such, many of the tour operators were already shut down. add to that gale force winds and that pretty much ruled out the other tours. so, alas, we didn't get to go whalewatching (humpbacks). but my dad managed to wrangle a great overland tour for us on our first day.

Charles Knife Road- looking into the canyon

as it wasn't a busy time, the tour operator was more then happy to take the 3 of us out for a half day excursion through Cape Range national park. we piled into his 4WD  and took off in the hot hot sun. our guide (Macca, a true australian nickname if i've ever heard one) was incredibly knowledgeable about the terrain, history and fauna in the park and along the coast. we drove along some sandy tracks (only accessible to our guide and a few army folk). as we drove, we saw a few wallaroos jumping about (wallaroo = wallaby + kangaroo). some breathtaking scenery made the incredibly bumpy ride well worth it. he took us to an aboriginal sacred cave and showed us the rock paintings. we then drove around the cape to Charles Knife Road. it felt comfortable for us in our 4WD, but mr. knife had to mark this trail out on foot in the scorching sun. a few treacherous places would have been deadly in the bulldozer flattening it all down. they were looking for oil when they built the road. they found none.  we then went to shothole canyon, another oil dig. and lastly, we stopped at Kailis where my folks had some local prawn, fresh from the boat the night before. apparently they were good.

Lakeside

the next day we rented some snorkel gear and headed to the western side of the cape to explore the ningaloo reef. again, strong winds made this experience a bit less then amazing- the water was somewhat murky and the waves a bit strong for the less experienced ocean swimmers in our group. we spent some time at lakeside, hoping to get our feet wet (pardon the pun). before heading off to turquoise bay, we stopped in at the visitors centre (to double check the weather patterns). off in the sky, because of the super strong winds, was a sheet of red dust. it looked ominous, like a tropical storm brewing. but we were informed that it was nothing but the wind dragging the red dirt off cape range. nervousness aside, we set off for turquoise bay to do the drift snorkel. it was cool, but because of the strong winds opposing the current, it was less of a drift and more of a normal snorkel. thoroughly swum out, we drove home.

on our last day in exmouth, we managed to get ourselves onto a glass-bottom snorkeling tour. those who were less inclined to jump in could watch the seas below from the comfort of our boat. others, like myself, jumped in and paddled around some big bommies (as the coral is known), which were teeming with fish. we even saw a monster fish, a queensland grouper (why it was in WA, i don't know...) but that was from the safety of the boat.

our trip to exmouth was enjoyable. sun, sand and nothing much to do. a pretty nice holiday indeed!
xo