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Before I tell you about the literally wildest day of my life so far, let's go back to where we were in the end of last entry.
Early on a Thursday morning I jumped on the Easyrider bus for the last time (or so I thought) to travel to Exmouth, another small town 150 km away. Two of my friends had come up to the bus to say goodbye to me. The driver was a funny guy and tried to kidnap them by starting the bus and driving away, all of us aboard. D escaped by jumping off at a crossroads, but K was up for a day exploring Exmouth, so she stayed on the bus. (The shuttle service was free of charge for Easyrider customers and would go back to CB the same day.)
We had a fun drive to Exmouth, drawing on the windows (those markers come off by wiping), bitching about Mr Annoying (the driver would go to the national park with him for two nights, so he needed to be warned - we're so mean), and making extra stops and detours to admire 2-3 m tall termite mounds and the views over the gorges surrounding the Cape Range national park.
I spent Friday not doing much. I prepared a blog entry, read a novel, walked around the town trying to find something interesting (but failed). I even visited both IGA supermarkets to compare prices, which turned out to be worthwhile s one was clearly cheaper than the other - it escapes why on Earth there are two shops of the same chain in the same mall, offering the same line of products for different prices.
The town of Exmouth is quite displeasing to the eye. I wonder why all the buildings are so ugly: flat-roofed boxes with grey or beige corrugated iron walls. I'm aware of the fact that the whole town was wiped out by a cyclone 11 years ago, but what about other Australian towns? It's as ugly in every small settlement along the West coast. Do they really not care how their buildings look like? They can't all be too poor to do something about it. It could be lack of the sense of style - when I see some exterior decorations have been done, it's usually something very interesting, like the brick wall in my Broome hostel that was painted mint green with purple stripes. I see heaps of interior design magazines in shops, so there seems to be a market for that. I so wish they would also read magazines on exteriors.
On Saturday it was time for the event I had come to Exmouth for: a cruise with the opportunity to swim with the biggest fish in the world - a whaleshark. Before you think I'm as suicidal as Finns get, or at least have gone mental, I'll tell you a fact about whalesharks. Although they are definitely sharks and have the "whale-" part in their name because of their sheer size (the biggest whaleshark recorded was a whopping 18 m long!), they do have another thing in common with whales - their diet. Whalesharks eat plankton and a few other small organisms, filtering them from the water they swallow. Thus, I would definitely not look like an appetizing snack to them.
In the beginning of the cruise we sorted out our snorkelling gear and got some short-sleeved wetsuits to fight the coldness of the water. We had been out at the sea for about an hour and were on our way to some snorkelling site, when we spotted something more interesting: manta rays! These "eagles of the sea" are pretty peaceful fellows and don't have any parts they could harm humans with, so we decided to go and greet them. The first group was entering the water, when I saw two dorsal fins swimming towards the boat. SHARKS! I had to options to choose from: 1) stay on the boat safe from the sharks bu miss out on the mantas, or 2) trust that the crew knew their trade well enough to recognize what type of sharks these were (which I wasn't too sure of as the crew consisted of young backpackers) and not let us in the water if it wasn't safe. The first group was in the water now and went chasing the sharks, swimming away from the boat, so I decided to trust our collective luck and jumped in... to greet at huge, 3-meter-wide manta swimming directly towards me. It looked more like an alien or a spaceship than something out of this world.
The manta circled around me playfully. I could only appreciate its elegance while snapping away with my camera. Soon it disappeared in the ocean, swimming too fast for us to keep up.
Next, we were greeted by a green sea turtle swimming below us. Those beings are so pretty, and I was happy to finally see one in the wild.
Next, our group leader collected us together and told us to listen. "There's a whale coming." I dipped my head under the surface to see if I could see it coming, but the visibility wasn't that good as there was too much glittering plankton (plankton seriously looks like someone has dumped millions of pieces of makeup glitter into the ocean). I lifted my head and suddenly I saw the humpback whale heaving itself from the water, a mere ten meters in front of me. The exposed part of the back was the size of a car, so I could only imagine how large the whole thing was.The captain motioned us to get back on the boat, but once we were all onboard, he spotted more rays and chanted "go go go go go go go" again. This time it was a group of three mantas, all of them as big as the one we had seen before. They swam around and around, playing with the
weird humans. One of them glided below me, swimming together with me so close that I could've touched it if I wanted to. I could see all the details of its body, and the school of little colourful fish swimming between its jaws. It didn't feel real. It was pure magic.
I was back on the boat, gloating with excitement and the awe I felt. I found it hard to believe that the highlight of the cruise was still ahead of us.
It took only half an hour till we got a message from our spotter plane that helped with looking for the wildlife. They had found a whaleshark, and it was very close to us. Frantic action started when everyone tried to get ready as quick as possible.
When it was my turn, I stepped into the water, and stopped to float. We had been told that we would be dropped in front of the shark, so it was only a matter of waiting. After fifteen seconds I could see it charging towards me, really fast. I quickly jumped to the side to let it pass, then started swimming alongside its head. (If we swam in front of it, the shark would probably freak out and use the only defence meganism it knew - diving deep down not to be seen again, which we didn't want to happen.) The thing was damn fast, and I had to kick as hard as I possibly could to keep up. We changed turns with the other half of our group (only ten people are allowed to swim the shark simultaneously), and then it was our turn again to swim on the other side of it. We had been there for twenty minutes, and I was completely exhausted. Then, suddenly the shark started to descend, and it sank to the depths (I can only tell you it was deep, I couldn't make out anything below me) and we couldn't see it anymore.
Once the adrenaline wore off, I sat on the deck contemplating the fact that I had just swum with the biggest fish in the ocean. Ours wasn't fully grown yet, but at about 5 m long it still looked massive. I don't know how to describe what I felt when I saw the shark charge at me. There were no words in my head, just alertness. It was amazing. I can't believe the crew members do this every day and get paid for it! May I please steal the job of the photographer guy? (All pics in this entry are by me, though.)After all the exercise, the simple cold lunch tasted amazing. Then it was time for our last snorkel of the day. I didn't stay in the water for long, because the nasty stinging sealices were biting me too much, and it was too deep to see much anyway. My feet were hurting, and once I took the fins off again I discovered the reason: all that flipping had peeled the skin off some of my toes, which, combined with the salty water, didn't feel too nice.
So I settled on the deck and entertained myself with an other awesome activity: whalewatching. I was told that the noise I had heard underwater had been the whales talking to each other. There were so many of them, some of them swimming quite close to the boat. Two adolescent whales kept breaching (that's whale jargon for jumping out of the water) all the time. Too bad my crappy camera was too slow to capture it very well. (Still, I'm glad I didn't bring the better camera, as I manged to slosh water on the other one several times - the waterproof pouch was on though, so no harm done.)
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I forgot to mention one thing in the Coral Bay entry. Since it fits the "magic of the ocean" theme, I'll go into it now. It's about a really special wildlife encounter that illustrates how rich the nature is and how special moments you can experience in Ningaloo Marine Park.
One day (while I was in Coral Bay too), some people went on a whalewatching cruise, and found quite a scene: they saw a killer while slaughter a baby humpback whale. The next day, a few guys from my hostel were out at the sea fishing, when they came across the carcass of the baby humpback - with a bunch of tiger sharks feeding on it. The guys were watching the scene intently, one of them leaning out of the boat to get a better view. He didn't notice that one of the sharks got curious and started to approach the boat, but luckily his friends did and yanked him backwards before the shark got close. Tiger sharks are not in the same category with the harmless reef sharks that I've seen - these sharks could rip you apart.
Had I been there, I probably would have been scared shitless and never dare to swim in the ocean again. Still, I can only be fascinated about the story. It would have been priceless to experience that!
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The following day I was already bored again - the town was so uninspiring that I was getting desperate. Even the TV at the hostel only had one channel - and a very weird one at that, showing programs in languages like Russian and Chinese without subtitles. There must've been something wrong with the TV set... So, in the afternoon I was on my way to the used book store to see if I could find something new to read (for the first time I had ended up in a hostel with no books lying around when I needed one), when I spotted a familiar bus at the gas station, someone waiving at me behind the window. My saviour had arrived! I had know that D the German girl was coming to Exmouth that day, but I didn't know when, nor where she was planning to stay. But now destiny (or whoever takes care of these things) had brought us togethere and she could check in to the same room with me. I was so grateful not having to be bored anymore!
For two days I had company and a very good time. Apart from her taking the same whaleshark tour I had done (and having an equally awesome time), we spent all our time together gossiping and watching movies on her laptop. We also gave in to the temptation and watched the new Twilight movie 'Eclipse' online, as neither of us wanted to wait until getting to some place big enough to have a movie theatre.
On Wednesday morninh D left on a flight to Melbourne, and I stayed to wait for my bus that would leave at 10:30 in the evening. I actually had quite a productive day: having discovered that you could use the hostel computers for free if you didn't go online, I could finally arrange all my pictures (I worked on them for hours and still wasn't finished) and work on my course plan for when I go back to uni in September. I also went to the library to read, and managed to leave my phone there. Luckily, I noticed it was gone and knew where to look for it, so I could run back to the library ten minutes before the closing time. I don't know why taking care of all my stuff seems to get more and more difficult as time passes - maybe I just don't care enough.
I left the town on the bus late in the evening. I was going to change buses after we reached the highway, so I was planning to have something to eat at the roadhouse while waiting. It turned out that "turn off" literally meant just that - it was a crossroads in the middle of nowhere and nothing else. I was so happy that the bus driver had to pick up people from the other bus and so couldn't just dump as there. It wouldn't have been fun waiting outside in the darkness with nowehere to sit, especially as the connecting bus was 1,5 hours late. Luckily, I had also prepared well with a pillow, sleeping back, eye mask, ear plugs, food, and a magazine, so the 21-hour ride to Broome wasn't as bad as it sounds. It was just boring. The only remotely funny moment was when, ironically for an American company, we stopped at McDonalds for breakfast. (I was glad to have my own food - I've had brekky at McD once, and never hope to repeat that mistake again.)
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