Manta Ray

Spent a few days in Coral Bay now snorkelling off the beach, a big storm came on Saturday night so there's no access into Coral Bay now cos the road is flooded. The water is clearing a little but still extremely cloudy unless diving down to view the fish.

Alice found bed bugs so we had to move rooms, this is a bonus as we now get rid of the Flash coming in at 5am drunk & gettin in the wrong bed upsetting the Danish & also the young Dutch couple who have sex in top bunk squeaking away everynight. Poor Alice doesn't see this upside at the moment though she's covered head to toe in itchy red bites, poor girl.

I booked the Manta Ray tour very apprehensively due to the weather & water but we went out about 9ish and had a snorkel on the reef again, the spotter plane is up at 10am and called in shortly afterwards so we headed about half hour to the Manta Ray. The guide got in first but as soon as she got near it dived and was away. fortunately another one was close by, we all got in the water and swam over, it was at a cleaning station just floating around the bottom of the ocean being cleaned by wrasse, its was absolutely beautiful, so graceful the way it moved along. It was quite a way down but still great to see. We watched it for about 20mins then got back on the boat and headed back to Ningaloo Reef.

Everyone on board wanted to see sharks so instead of just snorkelling    we swam against the current about 200m through the reef wall where the waves were breaking and into a sandy patch in between the reef and waited for the sharks, not long passed before 5 reef sharks swam around us up to about 2m and so close, It was magnificent as they just glided past. We spent about half hour here then went back through the wall to the reef and snorkelled with the fish for another half hour before we got called back to go home.

I had lunch then went back down to the bay with Niamh and snorkelled for another 3hours, the water is almost clear. I'm quite gutted to be leaving tomorrow.

Had a BBQ with Lisa, Alice & Niamh courtesy of Western Exposure who gave us loadsa sausages and steak cos their tour didn't get through due to the floods yesterday.