I booked Col and I onto a Coral Bay snorkeling and glass bottom boat tour that goes for 2 hours and leaves at 10am. We needed to get to Coral Bay by 9.30am to book in at the office and then head over to the boat. Coral Bay is about an hours drive from Giralia Station. All went smoothly with the preparation and drive to Coral Bay and I am pleased to report that it ‘felt’ so much better now that School Holidays has finished. There were still many people around but it was not jam packed and you had room to park the car and move around.
Normally they do an hour on the boat and an hour snorkeling but because the weather was so nice the Captain suggested that we use most of the time snorkeling. They took us out to an outer reef and we snorkeled for about an hour and a half. It was fantastic. Both Col and I felt that it was great value for money, it was $57 for an adult and the experience was fantastic. It was great to view the coral through the glass bottom boat and get information from the Skipper on the drive out and the drive back from the reef. It was difficult to get any good photos though as the sun was reflecting off the glass. It was interesting when we pulled up that the fish loved to get under the boat, some really big Blue Lined Emporers and hundreds of small fish.
We also learnt a great new tip to stop your goggles fogging up, they used a mixture of baby shampoo diluted in water and put a squirt of it in our goggles and then we rinsed it off before getting in the water. My goggles didn’t fog up at all, so we will definitely continue using this solution.
The reef snorkel itself was fantastic. We were both surprised that the water was cooler than we expected, not too uncomfortable, but we both just expected it to be warm. We saw so many beautiful fish of all shapes, sizes and colours. Huge schools of Pike and other fish that we are not sure of the name of and many big pipe fish. We had a great time swimming around observing the reef and marine life and Col managed to get some great GoPro footage that he will edit and compile a video of.
After the snorkel we grabbed some lunch at the bakery and set up our laptops to do a bit of video editing and blogging, then took the opportunity to do a bit of a grocery shop and run some errands. We both loved the day and I am keen to do more snorkeling before we leave Ningaloo.
Hi ya .I hoping that is not the boat in the back ground behind Cols head in last photo ,that is a fair swim ,?
The goggle thing ,i used to do in my swimming days ,fantastic …..great day for you both .
Just wondering are there camping spots around the area… not necessarily van parks but 4WD access only ?
There is Warroora Station which is about 15km from Coral Bay and there is another camp called 9 miles which is north of Coral Bay. There is a cost to camp at these and the details are on Wiki. Of course I would suggest to camp at Giralia and drive an hour to Coral Bay haha. x
For sure Giralia is a must do. Really looking foward to the drone footage and to see a birds eye view of the beauty. Hope your new found skills can be passed on to the Giralia crews website so others can see
Thanks Tania, Col is working on it and we will put it up on the website and facebook page once done. x
Great stuff guys. Sounds like a good day xxx
Thanks Sam, it was a lot of fun x