We arrive at Coral Bay and have booked a
tour with the right provider in Coral Bay to have a snorkel with the giants of
the ocean. It’s an interesting place with touristy and laid back atmosphere. We
have to manoeuvre our Bus carefully onto the camp site, because it’s quite
narrow, but we manage.
The Nigaloo reef starts right from the beach, all you
have to do is put your fins on, wade into the water until you’re knee deep and
start snorkelling. The colours are fantastic, the variation in corals is
mesmerising and the fishes are at least as beautiful as the fellow fishes of
the Great Barrier Reef. We do some serious snorkelling training with Tim, Peter,
Jaap and Laura. She doesn’t need any training, because she is actually a
mermaid. She has asked for a lead-belt so she can do better surface dives.
We
have planned for Jolmer to swim with Laura and Tim, and I will take Peter and
Jaap. I decide to practice a few formations, ways we hold each other, either
simple hands, or elbows, or I grab their upper arms. I want to see what works
so when we are all in the water with an eight meter long shark, we can signal
each other and change formations easily. We also practice doing short sprints,
because the animal cruises at quite a high speed for snorkelers and we want to see
as much of it as possible.
While we swim with some of the kids Pieter and Els
look after the others. Then it is their turn to enjoy the beauty of this
underwater paradise.
When we all report early in the morning for
our big day, it turns out there is a technical failure of the fuel connection
on board the ship, and we cannot go, unless we want to swim with Manta rays? We
think of our options and decide to go to Exmouth for a couple of days and
return to Coral Bay later in the week for a rain check. You should have seen
the sheer disappointment on our kid’s faces. This is a slightly bitter lesson
in becoming adaptable and flexible in dealing with set backs and
disappointments.
But hey, nothing lost; we’ll be back later.
