Exmouth

Exmouth is a town on a peninsula on the West Australian Coast with the Ningaloo Reef on it's doorstep.

I came to this beautiful place on Wednesday after a 21 hours bus ride from Broome and met my first couchsurfing host. He is a local and very experienced with couchsurfers who are filling his life with a lot of stories and memories.

My biggest wish in Exmouth was the swimming with whale sharks my sister Melissa loved while she travelled the West Coast.

With a yacht we started our trip to a reef strip in the inner lagoon for a test snorkel.

On that one we already saw reef sharks...

some turtles swimming in the pretty corals, manta rays and of course a lot of colourful fish.

Rob had always and eye on us and the whale sharks from the tender.

The whale sharks can grow up to 18m while we were mainly swimming with one's about 7 metres long.

They just eat plankton and are therefor harmless to humans and have the nickname 'gentle giants'

The also have the amazing spots which definetly rates them to my favourite animals. While we were snorkeling we had 3 big whale sharks circling around us and the crew members said it was one of their best days ever.

At the end of the day we were swimming with around 10 different whale sharks and didn't want to leave these awesome creatures.

On our way back in the inner lagoon some excitement broke out because we found a dugong (sea cow) family and watched them for a while.

On our beautiful shark group photo I wonder why just my hair seems to do what it wants?!

The next day I went with my host Bill to the National Park for a walk around Jardie gorge.

After the walk we went for lunch to Sandy Bay with the nice turquoise coloured water and an afternoon snorkel in Oysters Stacks.

For the sunset we went up to the Vlamingh Lighthouse and enjoyed the view.