Flying trip to Exmouth

We had wanted to get up to Exmouth for some time and decided to take a flight up there as didn't facny subjecting Logan (and us) to the 2 day drive just to get there and back. If we had a few weeks and campervan then maybe a different story to stop off more and enjoy the journey, but not this time.

We had organised a "villa" as we wanted the flexibility of the house and more than one room in a hotel, as who actually sleeps in the same room as their kids, crazy idea :) And it turned out well, if not a bit stark as it is was a set of about 12 buildings newly built in a "compound" just outside of the town.

Logan and Janice having breakfast

Not sure what I expected as such after talking about going here for so long but was a bit odd to fly for 2 hours and still end up in a small town still in WA! Kind of felt like we had just popped up the road to Jurien Bay or somewhere much closer as although we were a good way north it wasn't tropical like Cairns or the east coast.

Anyway, that weird observation over with. And the holiday was very good, as we did some good exploring around the Cape as you have to drive up and over the top of it to get to the West side as Exmouth is actually on the east side of the cape (see the link above to maps if that's confusing...). And over on the west side are the better beaches with some great snorkel spots, with the most famous and the best we found was Turquoise bay.

Another lovely WA beach, but the good stuff was the fringing reef

I had booked one day out on a boat dive trip which actually turned out the be the grey day of the holiday, which was fine for diving as calm winds so good conditions. Did 2 good dives with some highlights being some very curious olive sea snakes, big rays hiding in the sand, several green turtles and a first for me was you could actually hear the whale song of the humpback whales during some moments of the first dive - pretty amazing!

It was snake vs ray and the ray did a runner!

Then the cape has a range of valleys and dried out (most of the year) river beds that you can do some good walks in and around. So armed with Logan's backpack we did a very pleasant wander through Mandu Mandu gorge, although decided not to do the scramble up the gorge part as didn't want to risk it with the little monster on my back! Was the perfect time of year to do it in approx 25 degrees, as would have been hard going in the 35-40 degrees of summer.

Then it wouldn't be a holiday without playing with my camera and the last night showed some good sunset and light reflections that begged for some slow shutter speed shots (trying same that 5 times...)

Lots more photos on the picasa album.