Thursday 15th May
Our departure time of 07.00 had to be closely adhered to as we had a strict timetable for that morning, and that was to make sure that we got to Monkey Mia for the dolphin feeding which happens every morning, like clockwork, at 07.30. We drove the 25km north along the peninsula and arrived at the beach as a crowd of people were gathering on the shoreline of the beach.
It was a cold and windy morning, not helped by the fact that most of us chose to stand in the shallows of the water in our barefeet and wait for the show to get underway. We stood about for about twenty minutes as one of the marine biologists provided us with some interesting information on the dolphins, their individual characteristics, and the importance of not over-feeding them (one of which is to ensure they don't become over-reliant on humans and therefore lose the ability to look after themselves in the open water).
The dolphins came right up to the shore, and people were selected from the crowd. They were only given one kilo of food at each feeding session, just enough to give them a snack, but not enough to prevent them from looking for their own food. I was surprised when I was asked to come forward and feed one of them. This only required me to place the fish in the water and let the dolphin take it from there, despite my efforts to get the dolphin to jump up like a dog by holding the fish above the its head.
We left Monkey Mia and took a guided tour around 'Ocean World', an aquarium in which we were introduced to a whole range of fish that inhabit the local waters around Shark Bay: stone fish, turtles, various rays, and some sharks that thrashed around in a pool below us when the staff lowered some fish down into the water using a rod with a plastic line attached to it. We were able to go out after and look out onto Shark Bay and saw some turtles cruise about in the turquoise waters below the lookout on the cliff edge. It's another spectacular place.
The rest of the day was spent driving up to Coral Bay, where some of us had chosen to stop over for a few days. It was another decent distance but we passed the time well with some jokes, and a few riddles and puzzles supplied by Evo. It was a really good laugh and everyone was very easy to get along with. I was also enjoying travelling through the outback, I had never experienced somewhere so remote, and it felt like a proper road trip.
We got to the 'Coral Bay Lodge' hostel after dark and checked into our dorms. I was sharing with Emer & Sean and a few other Irish girls who were leaving on the Easy Rider bus the next morning, and who had hung Irish flags over their beds to make sure noody missed the point. After dinner of some crappy pizza, we had a few games of pool and hung out around the bar area which was a really good place to chill out. There was a good crowd about but I headed to bed early, pretty tired and keen to get some rest before doing some snorkelling early the next morning.
