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The sign 'welcome to exmouth!' was in the distance, getting closer and closer...We had arrived! We'd pre booked a space on a caravan park so we checked in, parked up and went to investigate the town. There didn't seem like a lot to do at all.
Me and Justine took a walk through 'town' and we were right, there was not much there at all. They did have a shopping mall, but that consisted of about 5 shops! That's not a mall! C'mon! Two of those shops were supermarkets! And not only supermarkets, exactly the same ones...IGA. So stupid. It was unnecessary to have the same shop two second away from each other. They were the only two shops open as well. Saturdays here on the west coast seem to be relaxation days, nothing is open...as are Sunday's. Crazy!
We continued to walk through the so called town trying to find the library...which we eventually found but it was closed! Shock! It was soooo hot out and we were dreading the quite long walk back to the campsite. Luckily the gang had decides to drive the van into 'town' so we didn't have to use our little legs...we got a lift!
Back in coral bay me and curly stopped to talk to a guy who said he could get me a cheap deal on whale shark diving. The only thing was I had already paid $340 for it with a company which was apparently terrible according to him. He said he could get me it for $200. I wasn't really sure whether to believe him, he gave me his number so i thought: there's no harm in calling...right? Well when we got back to the campsite from town I gave him a call. I didn't expect him to answer but he answered straight away. He ten called the company and called me back to say its all sorted. He had pulled through for me and Justine. I was so confused about why he had done it but it was a HUGE discount. The only thing left for me to do was to call the company i'd booked it with already to try and get a refund. I told her our car had broken down and we couldn't get to exmouth in time. She believed me...woo and said I could have it, but she has to call me back to confirm. I said no problem, so while i was waiting for the call back me and Justine went to pay for the new deal! Woo!
After paying for the second trip...I thought 's***, what if she doesn't call back?? This was almost going to be the most expensive whale shark dive ever...$550 Crikey!' It was a tense Half an hour, but then the phone rang! Saved $72 wooop. Thanks Cameron. Random people rule! Curly, Joe and Janis also booked a dive. Once we were all booked on out trips we hit the beach for an hour or so.
Evening meal time had arrived and we had more fish...thanks to the guys from Coral Bay! Cod was on the menu along with a side of risotto. It was bloody lovely I must say! After food Liam, curly and me went over to the local bar to see if the Wales, Barbarians game was playing...but they weren't. It was a Saturday night and the bar was DEAD! What do people do around here for nightlife?We stayed for a drink anyway and watched an Aussie rugby game before heading back to bed. I did have an early morning ahead.
6.30am alarm sounded...and up we got, still a bit sleepy but ready to go for a swim with the whale sharks! Off we went to Ningaloo dive centre to meet our crew for the day. We met with two crew members one being absolutely gorgeous! His name was Dan!!! Girls...serious hot piece of meat. The other instructor was a good looking fella as well. It was going to be a gooood day!
On the bus we had a small quiz before getting to the pier. One of the questions asked was: 'how tall is tower zero in metres? Which is one of the naval communication pillars that come out of the water, and you can see it from all over Exmouth! So it's pretty tall. The question was asked to Justine, who replied with...'I don't know what a metre is...erm 10 metres?' he laughed and said no higher. So she tried again with 20 metres, and then 78 metres. He just continues to laugh. The answer was 387.9 metres...slightly out Justine haha.
We arrived at the reef where we met with another crew member, a cool Londoner called James. He took us over to the main boat on a little speed boat thing, which wasn't that fast. As we pulled up to the main boat we met the photographer and the spotter/captain. He looked ridiculous... he had a moustache which looked like Cogsworth from beauty and the beast! It was so funny. When we were all aboard we were ready to roll! It was time to get swimming.
There was a small breakfast waiting for us aboard...which included tetley tea!! It was good to have a nice brew. After a good cuppa we snorkelled up and jumped in the water for a morning snorkel. It was pretty incredible...the reef was beautiful. About 15 minutes in I spotted Justine a bit further away from the group on her own. When I put my head back under the water I spotted two sharks swimming underneath her. I shouted over to her, but she'd already spotted them and was yelling over to us in her Yorkshire accent; 'does anyone know there's sharks underneath me? Anyone?' haha. They were reef sharks I think so they weren't going to harm us, plus dolphins swam over and passed us in the water, that's when the sharks left and began chasing them. It was amazing to see. It was apparently really unusual for dolphins to swim in that spot so we were really lucky as well.
10am struck and the spotter planes were in the air on the hunt for whale sharks. We were back on board waiting for the signal that whale sharks were around. It was a bit of a difficult start...everytime it was spotted and we jumped in the water the shark would just dive down so we weren't really getting much swimming time with it. After about an hour or so of waiting patiently, and what I mean by that is talking to the sexy crew the shark had decided to stick around to have a swim with us.
Our groups were split into two and we each took our turns to swim with him. Me an Justine thought he needed a name so we called him Winfred... winfred the whale shark. He was HUGE...he just glided through the water happily. It was amazing. He had beautiful markings, and there were loads of little fish swimming underneath him all the time. Mayer hiding out down there, winfred wouldn't be able to spot them from underneath.
The visibility in the water was quite bad so when you jumped in you couldn't tell which direction the shark was coming towards you. On one of our turns the shark turned up a little sooner than we expected and Justine was right by it's mouth almost ready to get eaten haha. She's unharmed though don't panic!
I'm sure you've all experienced being on a day trip before. If so you just know that there's always one person who's an absolute idiot that you just want to punch! Well we had him on our trip and he was in our bloody group. Everytime we got in the water he would swim on the inside of us cutting us up, then he'd swim ahead of our leader when he was specifically told not to and what was even worse he kept swimming way to close which would sometimes result in the shark diving down! What was even more annoying was he had a girlfriend which must have been half his age(not a clue what she saw in him). Anyway they kept swimming holding hands trying to film eachother together! Pass me a bucket! It was so unnecessary, they were just getting in the way, kicking people with their finns! There was just no need for it.
After a good few swims with winfred it was time for lunch, and it was awesome compared to what we've been eating. It was a feast! There was salad, chicken, ham, pasta, lots of sauces... The best thing Justine spotted was stuffing, she was all over that! Haha.
For some reason during lunch Justine came out with 'i think if I were an animal I'd definately be a sloth! It has the easiest life ever! How good would it be!' it was so random, but a sloth...really? Who wants to be one of those? Haha.
After lunch we hopped back in the water for an afternoon snorkel, we weren't as lucky as we were in the morning but it was still pretty to see. It was then back to the bus for us. Before leaving we pretty much invited ourselves to a BBQ at Dan and James's house later that night haha. They agreed and told us where to find them, so we decided we'd have a girls night out and when we got back asked curly if she was up for joining us(which of course she was). We all got ready and the drinking commenced!
After a few beverages us girls started the walk to the boys house. The street was sooooo long and Dan had described his house just like every other house in the street...he did now make it easy for us to find. The street for darker and darker and in the end we just gave up and walked back to the camper to join the boys...so much for a girls night haha. The cards were out and we continued our night with drinking games. We finally decided on the name Big Bertha for the van...no idea how it came into discussion but we christened it by slapping it with a goon bag! That's right, she'd been goonified. A few hours later we were out of alcohol, all our ciders and goon had gone! We were completely dry! Uh-oh. Everyone was pretty merry though, Justine and me probably the most. We decided to go and venture off to find an open bar...which if we were sober we'd have known it was a stupid idea. Nothing is open past 10pm here especially on a Sunday. As soon as we saw the bar was closed we decided to take another stroll up the boys street! Now this was not a good plan as we were pretty wasted. We did it none the less and actually found it this time. We were outside it for about 10 minutes before Justine plucked up the courage to nose over the fence, when they spotted her and invited us in. It was pretty late by this point though and they were all chilling out watching tv... completely sober and there was me and Justine just sat there looking like idiots. What were we thinking?? It wasn't long either before I stared to fall asleep on the sofa...how embarrassing. I eventually said we need to go and James kindly gave us a lift back to the campsite. Justine at this point had borrowed a pair of James's trousers because she was cold. Giving them back to the dive shop in the morning was going to be awkward for her haha.
Morning eventually came and before we knew it, it was check out time and oh the hangover from hell had made an appearance. It wasn't going to be a good day! We planned to stay in Exmouth all day as Janis had a dive booked for the afternoon. As we had a few hours before he set off we went to the beach for a little while but I couldn't sit on it, it was way too hot for someone with a hangover.
A bit later we went to drop Janis off to do his dive. Luckily James was there for her to return the trousers...no awkward moment for her, haha. We waved goodbye to Janis and we took a little trip to see a gorge nor far from the campsite. Then we made a stop at the old naval site where there was an old drive in cinema, a bar and grill and a bowling alley which still has all the shoes and pins in. It was crazy to walk through the place...it was completely abandoned. To think just a few years ago that place would have been booming, loads of people just hanging out. It was really spooky there. Then it was back to the beach for us...again. There's not much else to do in Exmouth. I still couldn't face the beach so I decided to have a nap, well tried to, as I was about to drop off a car pulls up playing booming hardcore music. It was stupidly loud, when I looked up to see who it was, I was shocked. It was a little old Chinese couple! Are you serious? It must have been that loud because they were going deaf or something not because they were enjoying it...surely?
Well that music was a sign for us to leave and pick Janis up. He got back safely with a huge smile on his face! We had a happy Janis! Haha. James and Dan popped over for a quick chat and to ask us round theirs for a few drinks again, but we had arranged to meet Phil and Pete as they had made their way to Exmouth. It took us a good while to find them though, we searched and searched up and down roads but just had no luck. We were debating using one of the power sites that were around for the new houses being built just to make some food.
They weren't switched on though unfortunately otherwise that would have been a great plan!
After food we had another drive around...Justine then saw a car which looked exactly like theirs and started chasing it down the road, flashing and beeping at them but as we got closer we realised it was not them. The embarrassing thing was even after we'd realised we still continued to follow them. The car in front must have been s***ting themselves! Haha. How embarrassing.
We though they were just avoiding us at first but then they answered their phone and came to meet us at the road to guide us to where they were staying. That's where we parked up for the night and we all chatted for a while before heading to bed.
We'd planned to rise early to begin our long journey to Broome, and by long journey I mean 1400km!! 15 hours of driving! Yikes! Up early we were though and set off about 8.30am. Justine and Curly split the driving shifts and drove and drove! We made a lot of ground but still didn't reach Port Hedland by the end of the day. We decided to rest for the night as the sun was setting and we didn't want to hit any kangaroos!
We found a rest area and parked up. It was a long, slow night. We'd been driving all day and then arriving in a place where there's absolutely nothing to do...well it wasn't fun. After some food we all tried to get a fire going! It took us a little while...I was hopeless I kinda kept blowing it out...so I stepped aside and let the pro's do their job. Eventually we had a full blazing fire on the go and this time we had marshmallows to roast. Well not me, I don't like them...so I just watched haha. Curly was in a world of her own around the fire...he was playing a game of lost trying to make a fire torch so she could go searching like they do in lost...hers just kept going out after a little while. I don't think she realised in the program the torches are probably covered in petrol or something to stay alight! Haha. I tried joining in as well but failed miserably my torch was just a stick with a burnt end. Not the best thing to go looking with. Haha. It was another early to bed night for us to continue our journey to Broome!
8am wake up call, I had the tea brewing and we were all set to go once again! It was my turn behind the wheel again and we were off! It was just miles and miles of open road! Nothing to see at all...the only thing I could be somewhat interested in on our journey was the roadkill, we did pass a hell of a lot! Overtaking has to be the best part though...it brings a bit of excitement to the journey! Haha!
I got tired after a good few hours driving so I pulled into a rest area...but a rest area which happened to have a huge bushfire heading right towards it! What an idiot! Liam took the wheel and was our getaway driver. It was HUGE and just kept spreading as we were driving passed! Lucky escape for us!
Now we are about arrive in Broome! We have made it! Everyone is hot and sweaty...and very much in desperate need of a shower! So that's first on the agenda when we park up! What a horrible journey it has been! But now we have 3 days in civilisation to look forward too! Woooo! Shops, pubs and clubs! It's going to be a crazy few days... hopefully!
I survived the whale sharks...so let's see if I can survive a night on the town shall we?...it's been a while!
I'll be in touch you lovely lot!
To be continued...
J.L xxx
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