Last Thursday my boyfriend Andrew and I flew to Exmouth, Western Australia, having made the last minute call not to head to our planned destination, which was on fire. Literally. So we swapped Karinjini National Park and its (fiery) gorges for crystal clear turquoise water and white sand beaches. As you can imagine I was devastated.

Before I proceed, I feel like I need to include a map of where I was because today on the phone my mum asked me if Exmouth is near Perth. I’m not criticising, after all it was me who used to think Darwin was in Western Australia and Launceston in New Zealand, so I’m clearly not one to judge. So in the interest of general knowledge:

That’s where we were, 1270km north of Perth

The area is home to the Ningaloo coast, which includes the amazingly beautiful World Heritage Listed reef. To confuse things further, we didn’t actually stay in Exmouth for the first two nights but in Coral Bay which is 138km from Exmouth on the other side of the stretch of land that kind of juts out into the sea:

The red pin is where Coral Bay is

So after flying from Perth to the airport nearest to Exmouth, we grabbed a hire car (a Jimny, which is a hilariously small four wheel drive) and hurried along the winding road to Coral Bay so we could get to the water before sunset.

The winding road.

We past hundreds of termite mounds along the way and after what seemed like forever we arrived here:

Sigh.

Such a beautiful spot. I have no idea why the people who checked us into the hostel were so damn surly. I mean I know working in a hostel would be awful but at least you’re in a stunning part of the world!

Can’t even handle how good this is

We jumped into bathers and headed for the water. My friends Dave and Lauren very kindly leant me their GoPro camera for the trip so I tried it out, first above water:

And then below.

I quickly learnt that I have no future as an underwater photographer:

So blurry

Oh well.

After our swim we grabbed some ginger beers and took front row seats on the beach to watch the spectacular sunset.

Alcoholic ginger beer = the best

Sid the seagull

I love a good sunset, but the sky after the sun had gone was far superior.

Those colours

How is this real?!

After the sunset we had a BBQ back at the hostel and then went to bed early ahead of a big day of snorkelling. More to come!