Day 119 Cape Range National Park & Ningaloo Reef

Another day to explore the Cape Range National Park and the Ningaloo Reef. We started the day with a detour to the Bloodwood Creek: no turtles or whales to be seen, just some water splashing. So we drove on to the walk of the day: Mandu Mandu Gorge. There is no water in the gorge, so you walk in the rocky gorge and then up to the rim of the gorge. The walk back is then along the rim of the gorge. No wallabies to be seen, but some okay views on the gorge.

After this walk, it is finally time for the beach! Stuart is very excited to be at Turquoise Bay, where you have white sand, turquoise blue water and a clear blue sky. So Stuart started to build his own sandcastle and was watching it to defend it from sea gulls and others. Stuart again attracted the attention of others wanting to make photos of him. The beach has nice views and lots of people go snorkelling. At the one end of the beach there are some rocks where different crabs hide from the sea gulls.

As we were booked on a whale watching tour for the sunset we had to leave the beach earlier than we actually wanted. But the whale watching tour from Exmouth marina was worth it! For about 2,5h we were looking for splashes and fins to identify Humpback whales, mostly females with their new-born to one-year-old calves. Pretty exciting and at the same time relaxing tour into the sunset. With the clouds in the sky the sunset was even better. On the way back to Exmouth we even saw a rare sea snake, which are all very poisonous.

After dinner, we wanted to have a look, whether we could spot any turtles on the beach in the Cape Range National Park. It is too early for the females to lay eggs or the hatchlings to run into the water, but sometimes you can see in the evenings turtles coming up the beach. Unfortunately, there were no turtles on the beach this evening - just a nice full moon with interesting clouds.