On closer inspection and despite it’s obvious commercialisation, Coral Bay is a stunningly beautiful bay. Forget the caravan parks, the numerous tour operators offering dive trips, snorkelling trips to the reef, swimming with whale sharks, manta rays etc, etc. Instead imagine a well-retouched picture postcard of the archetypical tropical beach; a few palm trees, soft white sand, a curving bay and three distinct bands of blue sea – milky blue in the long shallows, vivid turquoise as the shallows begin to fall away quite suddenly and then deep blue beyond. Magical! There are not as many fish to see here as further up the coast, but the corals just offshore are far more diverse; a fascinating world of dramatically beautiful shapes and colours. Shoals of large fish (Emperors, we think) swimming just off the shallows are not the least bothered by us. Later in the afternoon there is is a feeding session for the wild Blue Spangled Emperors that come into the shallows. These large fish, their bodies breaking the surface of the water, so shallow is it, swim in and out and round the legs of the crowd that congregates to watch and admire these beautiful creatures.
We investigate the tours offering trips to swim with whale sharks. Here the tours are $395 pp with no guarantee that the boats will find the whale sharks. In fact, there apparently haven’t been any sightings for the last three days. The only compensation if there is no sighting is a second trip. After that its just bye bye money. It seems a high risk proposition and we give some consideration to a trip to swim with manta rays. The biggest rays in the ocean they inhabit the surrounding waters in abundance sightings are more or less guaranteed. A better bet at $165 each.
A further call to the Indian Visa Office confirms that we can submit an application by post. The call to Perth to obtain that piece of information costs $10 (£5) on a premium rate number! But we are armed with details of how to download the forms and that costs another $8.50 at the internet cafe. The cost of this visa lark is beginning to add up and we haven’t even got to the point of applying yet! The biggest stumbling block to making our application, turns out to be the obtaining suitable photographs. The passport photos we have with us don’t conform to the very precise and rather unconventional requirements of the Indian Visa Office. For a start they must be 2 inches square. They must also be shot against a coloured background and the face must be a specific depth and the eyes must be in a certain position in relation to the bottom of the photo. We either have to go to the Visa Office in Perth where they have the facilities to produce such photos or we can try the nearest town, Carnarvon 150 km further south. We opt for the latter although without much hope of success.. So tomorrow we will be leaving Coral Bay rather sooner than we had intended putting paid to any thoughts we may have had about swimming with whale sharks or manta rays..
The southern night sky viewed in the bush away from the spoiling effects of light pollution is the most indescribably beautiful and awesome sight. The night sky in the northern hemisphere just doesn’t stand comparison. The milky way cuts a huge swathe across the sky; a hazy canopy of million (if not trillions) of indistinguishable stars form a backdrop for a huge display of brighter, glittering stars. The sky bursts with light even though there is no moon An incredibly wondrous a spectacle.