Exmouth is a small coastal town and provides the access point to Cape Range National Park. Our first stop was the Dive Centre where Ben booked in for the 'Old Navy Pier' dive one of the top ten dives in the world. Then we drove along the Cape and had our first snorkel on the World Heritage Ningaloo Reef at Oyster Stacks. The reef is about 20 meters from the shoreline, the water is crystal clear, the variety of fish and coral were amazing and within moments we had seen, Angel, Tangs and Butterfly fish and our first sighting of a White Tip Reef Shark. That night we stayed at Yardie Creek Campsite and had a great pitch overlooking the beech watching the sun set with a cold beer, a perfect day......

The next morning we hiked along Yardie Creek to view Yardie Creek Gorge, where we spotted a few Kangaroos before heading back along the Cape for the most popular drift snorkel at Turquoise Bay. Again the reef is only about 20 meters off the shoreline but was by far the best snorkel area, with much larger corals, more colour and even more fish. Ben and I had been in the water about ten minutes just floating along on the current when along our right side a green Turtle came swimming past, we also spotted Sting Rays and more reef sharks. We did two more snorkels that day at Lakeside and again at Turquoise Bay.

The two dives that I did at the Navy Pier in Exmouth defiantly lived up to the status and the lunch wasn't bad either. First hurdle for me was the 2 meter jump off the pier into the water, which doesn't sound that high until your about to jump off.... In the end it was quite good fun. The peir itself is a T shape and juts out into the reef about 150 meters, so the dive wasn't deep only about 14 meters max, but meant that we had more time to explore. The amount of life living under the peir was quite amazing, there were tons of sharks, huge shoals of fish like Sweet lips,Snapper, Jacks and Trevally and also Groupers as big as me! On our second dive my buddy and I went off on our own and found the very centre of the pier, at about 4 meters we hovered there for most of the dive because the aumbandiance of fish was like an aquarium, it was amazing!

After the dive Nikki and I drove to Coral Bay where we pitched up at the Coral Bay campsite. The following morning we checked onto the Eco Tour Manta Ray experience. There were 26 people including us on the trip, we were all kitted out with snorkel gear before being driven the short distance to the boat. The Ocean around Coral Bay is beautiful and very blue, we travelled out for about 20 minutes to the outer reef where we had our first snorkel of the day. It was pretty 'awesome' the coral was the biggest we had seen and there was even more fish, turtles, white tip reef shark and zebra sharks! Back on board the crew made us coffee and cake and we began the hunt for Manta Rays. It wasn't long before the Skipper was asking one of the crew to jump in fast and follow the Manta, a large female. We had to slip into the water in smaller groups and trying not to splash around too much we began swimming following our guide and then we were swimming above her. The Manta Ray was just gliding gracefully beneath us and then suddenly she was joined by two males who began to swim just behind her. It was a pretty special experience and although there was 26 of us in the group because we got in the water in smaller groups it really felt like an intimate experience, we both loved it and Nikki finally stopped freaking out about sharks! On board with us were a Couple who had also done the Navy Pier Dive and we also met another couple from the UK.

Back on dry land we arranged to meet for a drink and swap photos from the day, but in the end we found ourselves at 2am sat in Kenny and Kira's luxury camper with aircon drinking a crate of beer us lads had purchased from the bottle shop after the bar had closed!!! Tom and Emily were heading back to Exmouth but Kira and Kenny were pretty much taking the same route as us back to Perth and it wouldn't be our first meeting!

After rising late Nikki and I did the short walk along the beach to the Shark nursery, where I waded out about 4 meters and watched all the sharks swimming around me. Nikki declined to join me so i watched while she was surrounding by flies on the beach!!! Then it was time to hot the road once more next stop Monkey Mia.

The drive was pretty long and boring although once we got a little closer to Monkey Mia the coast line began to open up and the view was great. We hadn't seen another camper or 4wd for sometime until we were about 60k outside of Monkey Mia, when suddenly behind us came a very large camper, we joked and said it might be Kira and Kenny, and sure enough it was... Monkey Mia is a small resort and much more commercial than the other places we had been on the West Coast and its star attractions our the pod of female dolphins that frequent the shoreline every morning to say hi to all the tourists..

Up early ad joining the other 30 people along the shoreline at 7.45am we watched as the dolphins made their way to the shoreline. Rangers are on hand to give history and information about the dolphins and it is pretty cool. The older females swim right along the shoreline with one eye out of the water so they see everyone.... The Guides also do a feeding session with them and I arranged for them to pick Nikki out of the crowd and she got to feed a dolphin called Nikki!!! On their first visit that morning to the Bay one of the staff noticed that a new calf had been born and it was only about two days old, on the second and third visit some of the dolphins took fish but not all of them, which shows that they quite often just come to show off for the crowd. After the excitement of feeding the dolphins, we hit the beach for a few hours and then spent the afternoon travelling back along the shark bay coast before stopping at a free camp site Gelena Bridge.