Coral Bay: Part I

And just like that, our trip to Coral Bay is over. Sitting in the airport at Learmonth now waiting to board the plane back to Perth. Littttle stressed out about getting these blog posts up, going through the pictures, and, oh yeah, actually studying for my finals. But back to the beginning:

Double Update: Finally getting these posts up, back at Perth! Took me longer than I had hoped for to sort through photos and actually study. First exam over with, three more to go! 

Friday, October 29^th: Friday morning we all woke up and met for an earlyish breakfast before getting a ride to the airport. I called to arrange a big taxi to pick us up so was pretty amused when an actual bus was waiting for us outside. Everyone and their bags could have gotten their own row pretty much. The flight to Learmonth and drive down to Coral Bay was pretty painless and uneventful and soon enough we were pulling into the little town of Coral Bay. 

Coral Bay is a pretty small place, but has everything you could need. There was a supermarket (very overpriced though), a bakery (the source of many delicious meat pies), bottle shop, dive centre, and two or three cafes. Oh and there was also this incredible beach! The water here is pretty top notch – beautiful shades of blue and a warm but still refreshing temperature that is perfect for getting out of the blazing sun. One thing we discovered very quickly about Coral Bay is that it gets really hot. We arrived at the house around 4ish, picked up some groceries for the night, went for an end of the day swim to wash off our day of travel, and enjoyed our first sunset at Coral Bay. 

The house was everything we could have hoped for. Just realized I didn’t really take any pictures of it, but it consisted of a living room area, dining and kitchen area, three bedrooms, a porch, and a bathroom. It was supposed to sleep 10, but we managed to fit 11 in comfortably. Seeing as Coral Bay is in the middle of nowhere, at night, the stars really come out. 

Pretty breathtaking seeing that many stars at once. For whatever reason, these stars seemed to twinkle more than I have ever seen. Really made me understand where that expression comes from – at times the stars seemed to change shades of color from white, to blue, to red, and others (and no, it was not an airplane).

 Also, if one wanted to see a shooting star, you just had to look up and within a few minutes you were almost guaranteed to see one. At one point we thought we saw three shooting stars going off at once, but then realized that they were just bats picking up the light. Whoops! 

Can you see the kangaroo? Was originally going for a 3D cube but it didn't work out.

Not a bad way to end the day just lying on our front lawn watching the stars.