Coral Bay Part 2

14/8/2015

Started easy into another sunny day in Coral Bay. After extending the camp site and booking another day out diving for tomorrow I grabbed the usual morning coffee at the bakery. Back at the camp I started to have a lengthy chat with my neighbors and was invited to another coffee. Valentina and Brian are a lovely couple from Sydney who retired a few years ago from having multiple businesses – mainly travel and visa related. We talked for more than an hour and watched the new arrivals trying to squeeze their huge camper trailers into the tiny sites next to us. Quite entertaining!

As it was getting close to lunch time and I wanted to use the great weather to go snorkeling, we agreed to reconvene our conversation over dinner and wine in the evening.

I enjoyed the great visibility in the water and spent probably more than an hour out, watching closely what happens on the various coral reefs.

After the snorkeling, I grabbed my camera and hiked towards the shark nursery – a shallow protected sandy bay where you can often find small, young sharks to grow up. But it turned out that they are not there yet – usually they start around September. It was a lovely walk though and I saw some small rays, heaps of seabirds and a lot of rock crabs on the way back.

the small ray in shallow water

Poser!

Hiding

Playing hide and seek with a rock crab under a big stone

As it was close to 15:30 and a Friday, the fish feeding was on again and I took advantage from having the big lens on the camera. These spangled emperors are quite big and are already waiting to be fed by all the people that gather there. The woman that hands out the fish pellets educated us about the fish and Ningaloo reef in general. Quite interesting.

Fish feeding - spangled emperors in Coral Bay

I struggle to leave this place and migrate south to the colder regions!

On the way back to the van, I met Peter, a former EPCM consultant that used to work on some of the projects I've been on too. He changed companies about 2 years ago and has two little kids now – I guess his life changed quite a lot!

The second snorkeling session was nice too and really refreshing, after the walk in the heat. Back at the camp I made sure to be among the first at 6pm to queue up at the pizza place. Kicked it off with Valentina and Brian by emptying the cabernet sauvignon over dinner. Later on, Brian and I polished off another two bottles of Merlot and we were joined by some other fellow campers that they met on a campsite further north.

Our conversation was extremely interesting – they have had many interesting businesses, invest a lot in real estate and have traveled the world extensively. Time flew and suddenly all the wine was gone and it was past 10pm. I bid them farewell and we decided to meet up in Carnarvon the day after tomorrow as they were moving already tomorrow but I am going to stay another night.

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15/8/2015

Happy Birthday

Didn't sleep too well to be honest – too much wine and junk food yesterday! It was very cloudy when I got up – a bit like my brain! Felt years older than when I woke up yesterday, thanks to disregarding my usually healthy lifestyle.

Went out diving with the same dive shop – by now knowing all the crew pretty well and getting a good discount! It took ages to finally start the first dive – we were in the water for probably 15 minutes as the dive master had to do a refresher with another diver who hadn't done any diving in years. The dive was quite nice though – but I could have stayed for probably another hour to use up all the air I had left in the tank. We saw a resting green turtle lying on a piece of coral, a white eyed moray eel, heaps of fish and many, many different corals.

Missed the whale sharks this year - so they are still on the bucket list!

The manta rays must have known that it's my birthday today – they were having an absolute blast: we saw at least 15 manta rays and they stayed around for more than half an hour. The were barrel rolling most of the time – a feeding behavior where they swim loopings. Great because this way you can see them from every angle and very close. Absolutely fantastic! While you are not allowed to move closer than 2 meters towards them, they didn't mind to get closer to us when they were rolling, some of them came almost to touching distance! It is unbelievable to see one of them, but being literally surrounded by a whole group and them getting super close is a wonderful experience. At times my whole field of vision was either totally white (their belly) or black (when you see their back). Magnificent creatures, gliding gracefully through the water – I think I got a new favorite animal!

After more than 30 minutes of pure enjoyment and fun (also seeing a stingray, a tiny seahorse and many large milkfish when I managed to get my eyes off the manta rays) we had to leave them and get back onto the boat. While the crew was preparing lunch, Simo, the skipper for today, moved the boat back towards the dive sites. Luck stroke again and we saw a few groups of humpback whales. The one that was jumping and breaching was very far away, even the 300mm zoom lens that I wisely brought along on my camera today was barely enough. We also saw a female whale with a calf, swimming past our boat. They are on the way down south, towards shark bay and then continuing all the way down to Dunsborough. We saw some dolphins too, but they were swimming past us at high speeds.

Lunch was appreciated as staying in cold water works up quite a hunger. The second dive, back at Asho's Gap (one of my absolutely favourite dive sites!) was brilliant – three large grey reef sharks were hanging out at the cleaning station. We observed them for several minutes from a good distance. The sharks get their mouths, gills, wounds and eyes cleaned by little fish, hovering in 45 degrees angle above the coral that looks like a cabbage on steroids. They didn't mind us watching but after a few minutes we left the station to explore the other parts of this dive site. I took a small tank this time as I seem to have masses of air left as all the dives here are very shallow. This way I could ensure that other people could use the big bottles and make our dive last longer. Our guide must have forgotten to watch the dive time, we were down for 58 minutes which is more than they usually allow. While we were on a sandy patch and the guide had to look after the refreshing diver who was fighting with her buoyancy, I did the headstand exercise that Luke taught me at the Great Barrier Reef during the master buoyancy dive. I love the feeling when the air you breathe out moves through the wet suit, the world is upside down and you control the distance to the floor by your breath. Great fun!

Thanks for all the people sending me wonderful messages and emails for my birthday – I'm looking forward to catching up with all of you when I'm back in Austria respectively wherever the wishes came from. I'll treat myself to a nice dinner at Bill's tonight and want to end this post with a poem that I got via email today:

Ich wünsche dir Zeit

Ich wünsche dir nicht alle möglichen Gaben.
Ich wünsche dir nur, was die meisten nicht haben:
Ich wünsche dir Zeit, dich zu freun und zu lachen,
und wenn du sie nützt, kannst du etwas draus machen.

Ich wünsche dir Zeit für dein Tun und dein Denken,
nicht nur für dich selbst, sondern auch zum Verschenken.
Ich wünsche dir Zeit – nicht zum Hasten und Rennen,
sondern die Zeit zum Zufriedenseinkönnen.

Ich wünsche dir Zeit – nicht nur so zum Vertreiben.
Ich wünsche, sie möge dir übrigbleiben
als Zeit für das Staunen und Zeit für Vertraun,
anstatt nach der Zeit auf der Uhr nur zu schaun.

Ich wünsche dir Zeit, nach den Sternen zu greifen,
und Zeit, um zu wachsen, das heißt, um zu reifen.
Ich wünsche dir Zeit, neu zu hoffen, zu lieben.
Es hat keinen Sinn, diese Zeit zu verschieben.

Ich wünsche dir Zeit, zu dir selber zu finden,
jeden Tag, jede Stunde als Glück zu empfinden.
Ich wünsche dir Zeit, auch um Schuld zu vergeben.
Ich wünsche dir: Zeit zu haben zum Leben!

Elli Michler

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