Day one in the big brother backpackers...

Hahaha day one at Ningaloo reef started off well. I had a nice sleep and then realised I should get outside before it gets way too hot out! I went and did some snorkelling for the morning.

Within a few seconds on being in the water I almost trod on a sting ray sat camouflaged on the sand. That would have been fun! Shame I didn't have my camera on me at the time he was a big b***** too. I swam around for a bit and came across some minor fish but nothing I hadn't seen before. Then I came across the biggest jellyfish I have ever seen! Bigger than the football sized one in Vietnam! Just casually floating there near the edge of the water. All I can say is if you tread on it then you're blind.

I got to see a blue spotted ray, some parrot fish and some angel fish all whilst snorkelling pretty close to the shore. It was then that I discovered another casualty...my aquapac now has a hole in it. No more underwater photography for me for a while!

I still wanted to do some diving on the reef so I went and signed myself up at the dive shop. They should be going out tomorrow but it is dependent on a lot of things. The weather and whether they can get another 5 people to want to come along as well. Come on people! It's a dive on the reef and then snorkelling with Manta Rays...why wouldn't you want to do that?

Day two at Ningaloo reef.

Success there are enough people to go diving after all with a couple people who wanted to snorkel with the boat and not dive. We boarded onto the bus after being given our equipment, I must say a wet suit is a very strange feeling first time for everything I guess and we got under way. A bad omen settled over the boat when getting onto the boat one of the ladies almost ripped her finger off as she caught it on something getting on board. There was blood everywhere! She kept shouting she needed to go to hospital and needed a doctor, I will admit she was bleeding pretty heavily and it was her wedding ring that prevented anyone from getting to her wound as it was stuck. I really didn't want to hear the words if we take her ring off her finger might come off with it. Suddenly I was feeling a little queasy and it wasn't sea sickness.

After the lady and her husband were taken to the medical centre in Coral bay we got underway without them on board. It seemed to take forever to get to an area where the Manta rays can be found. We got there and got our safety brief. Houston...I think we're gonna need a bigger boat! Wow I never would have thought that they could get up to 4m it width and 6m in length! Just looking at how much of the boat that area took up I was s***ting myself. Thank heavens they don't have teeth! We got into the water but to be honest the interaction with the Manta rays was minimal. They were took busy scouring the water looking for food and kept zooming past us. Oh well next to the dive site.

Diving was good as always, there were a few little pedantic things which I could pick holes in such as the dive master swimming off without any of us and then losing one of us and then telling us to stop somewhere and disappearing for quite some time...enough said. However the dive site was good. Blue tipped coral, stingrays, scorpion fish, the usual suspects such as angel and clown fish and then we saw a massive turtle just chilling out underneath one of the coral formations. This thing was huge! Would love to have seen it in action! We had to depart not long after we finished the dive as the weather was turning south and the wind was getting up so back we went.

Although a little tired I ended up sitting with Sarah, Julia, Ben, Frederik and Yurek playing cards in the bar. I had the most fowl wine ever it sort of reminded of that scene in Hot Fuzz when Simon Pegg walks into the pub and asked about the wine selection and they say let's see well we've got red or white and he decides on a cranberry juice...why didn't I get a cranberry juice...

The night ended badly though...Team GB lost to Germany at pool in some of the worst playing I have seen in a long time!

Day3 Ningaloo reef.

I was up quite early today as Julia wanted to go snorkelling on the reef so I said I would go with her. It felt like we were the only people stupid enough to be out on the beach that early in the day in the windy and overcast weather. We were out there for a good 3 hours though which was nice. I saw some stingray, angel fish and all the usual suspects but to Julia's disappointment we never saw a turtle. I did tell her we were too close to shore but we looked anyway.

I know exactly what they mean by drift snorkelling now. The current was so strong I was beginning to wonder if we were going to make it back to shore. I kept swimming and swimming and the beach just was not getting any closer. It was a while later that I realised I had burnt my bum in the sun, that's going to be painful later!

Bumped into Ben later on in the day as Julia, Frederik and I went walking along the beach. We went passed the shark nursery but never saw anything (need to get there early morning) and went down to the end of the cove where a massive flock of seagulls just suddenly swarmed the sky. Almost felt like. I was in Hitchcock's The Birds for a second. I jokingly text Damian asking what he was up to back in Ireland and he said working, when I told him what I was doing he just told me you had to do one better...I just laughed...is this mean?

I went back and started to pack my things away into the car, tomorrow is going to be a very long journey since I am now not going to Exmouth but going to drive the long haul to Broome. The Greyhound takes about 23 hours to get there, let's hope it won't by car!