Exmouth
Exmouth is the gateway to Ningaloo reef and Coral Bay.
If you want to experience some incredible close encounters with whale sharks, humpback whales and manta rays then you cannot miss this incredible destination.
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Make your way to Perth in Western Australia.
Check out www.webjet.com.au for all the Australian airlines options.
Otherwise there are bus and car travel options but the distances are very very long!
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From Perth, Qantas airline flies to Learmonth airport. From here it would be best to hire a car as public transport doesn't provide adequate flexibility in exmouth.
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This website shows the carrier options
https://www.vroomvroomvroom.com.au/locations/exmouth/
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for more information see this website:
http://www.visitningaloo.com.au/welcome-to-exmouth/how-to-get-here
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Where do I stay?
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Essentially your options are Exmouth or Coral Bay. Exmouth is a slightly larger town with more options and greater variety of restaurants, bars, shops and accommodation.
Check www.booking.com or www.aribnb.com for options.
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The major advantage if you stay in Coral Bay is that 2 of our wildlife excursions departed from Coral Bay.
We decided to stay in a large house with Airbnb and decided to drive to Coral Bay - a 1.5-2hr drive. This gave us far more options for accommodations and thing store do outside wildlife spotting.
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When should I go and for how long?
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1 week was a perfect amount of time as we wanted to have a much time with the wildlife as possible and have time for a second trip if we missed a sighting.
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If you want to see as much large sea life as possible your timing is crucial!!
Read carefully:
There's an overlap of whale shark, manta ray and humpback whale migration in late July.
Check the migration timing at this site:
https://www.whalesharkdive.com/marine-calendar.html
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The trick is that the whalesharks start decreasing numbers by august, and the humpbacks only really start in large numbers at the end of July.
You should ideally try to avoid Australian school holidays, or else risk many tours being booked out.
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https://www.education.wa.edu.au/future-term-dates or check google for 'West Australian school holidays'.
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I booked the week after school holidays finished ie. Sunday 22 July - Sunday 28 July 2019. This was perfect timing for the end of whale shark migration and the start of the humpback migration. Manta rays are visible all year round but especially during that time.
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How should I arrange my week?
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I arrived in Perth on Saturday. I flew Perth to Learmonth on Sunday.
Accommodation was booked for Sunday to Saturday. I flew back to Perth on Saturday.
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Whale sharks
I was most interested in swimming with whale sharks so I booked this well in advance and chose Monday.
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I chose 3 Islands Whale Shark Dive (https://www.whalesharkdive.com) as they were the best reviewed on Tripadvisor and had the best cancellation policy. However all the companies have very high ratings! Their 'no sighting free return' policy also meant that if we were unlucky on the Monday we had 4 more days to try to book for a whale shark swim.
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Manta rays
Coral Bay Tours (https://coralbaytours.com.au) came highly recommended as a small company which a captain who was doing his PhD on marine life. Not only was he very knowledgeable but he had such familiarity with the marine park and the local animals that he allowed us to swim with a tigershark! While I don't recommend this in anyway, it was an incredible experience!
We booked this on the Wednesday.
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Humpback whales
Ningaloo reef dive and snorkel (www.ningalooreefdive.com.au) was a very professional company and we thoroughly enjoyed our humpback whale swim with them.
We booked this on Friday.
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If you have any questions feel free to email me at:
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good luck!!!
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Lahiru
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