Life's a beach and then you dive...

I've just returned from a family holiday up north to Ningaloo Reef, Exmouth. According to RAC travel, it takes 15 hours, 10 minutes to get there- I guess thats if you go the speed limit- it took us 14 hours (and thats with about 5 loo breaks)! We passed the Tropic of Capricorn- very exciting!
These 3 images (Australia, Western Australia, North West Cape) are thanks to Google Maps.

The view from our cabin (sorry about the cut-and-paste, I just stuck 3 photos together using paint- didnt think to use the panorama feature on my camera)

We stayed in a cabin on a hill at the Lighthouse Caravan Park, namely because of the lighthouse just further up the hill a bit. We had an amazing panoramic view from our deck (balcony for those COTA). Due to the fact that we were on North West Cape, we could actually see the sun rise over the Indian ocean (since the Indian Ocean is on the west coast of Australia, normally we only get to see the sun set over the Ocean). Ningaloo reef spans quite a lot of the north west coast, we only snorkelled the reef around exmouth. There were heaps of BEAUTIFUL beaches surrounding us. Since we were on the peninsula (North West Cape) we could drive south in both directions... it makes sense, really... We went to a different beach everyday!

Turquoise Bay

We had to walk along this stretch of beach to get to the Drift Loop

The snorkelling was AMAZING!! So many fish, superbly colourful! There were huge schools of little blue shiny fish in amonst other huge rainbow fish and cute little black & white fish (that look like nemo) and then there were yellow fish and red fish.... I saw 2 octopuses... (octopi?) an eel, turtles, star fish... We got a disposable underwater camera so after the film gets processed I'll post some photos we took of the fish and coral. The Drift Loop is one ofhte snorkelling sites, where you get in at one end of the beach and let the current take you across all the coral.

Lakeside Beach -not the best view of the beach but I think my footsteps look cool!

We went fishing on this deep sea fishing boat charter, turns out it wasnt such a great day for the fish to bite but we still caught a few... There were 12 people on our fishing boat (from all round Australia [and the world]) we all had a line in at different points around the deck. It was so exciting feeling the fish tug on the line, less so when you think you've got a fish and then it turns out to just be the line of someone on the other side of the boat!

Dad holding up one of the fish he caught

We had 3 near catches of sharks (one was on my brother's line) but they always ended up just breaking the fishing line!

One of the Americans on our boat playing tug-of-war with a shark (the shark did come closer to the surface at 1 point but I didnt manage to get a photo)

Sunset over Janzs Beach on our last day

Now I'm off jet-setting again but will post the underwater pictures, as well as other posts, in a couple of weeks (or perhaps tomorrow before flying out if I feel inspired)...