West Coast Day 134 - Shark Bay

We awoke to a beautifully calm morning and so had slept in a little. We didn't make it to the dolphin area until 8am and they were already in. There was a different ranger today, after 15 mins the feeding was over, and the dolphins returned to deeper waters. We had booked to go on the dugong and dolphin watching cruise at 1pm and so felt like killing some time sightseeing. Only 20 kms or so back towards the township of Denham is a beautiful spot called Little Lagoon. The waters are tidal (just) but it is the magnificent turquoise blue water that is the attraction. A narrow strip of white sand runs the whole way around the lagoon, which is almost a perfect circle. We continued sightseeing around Denham and then visited Whalebone Bay, Eagle Bluff, and Fisher Camp which are "Free Camps". We found great views and did some off-road exploring in our 4WD. Obviously, we took lots of photos and video. The real reason we left Monkey Mia was to go to the bottle shop in Denham to get beer for David but we arrived at 9am and the bottle shop didn't open until 11am. We killed time by exploring and it was worth it!

We returned to Monkey Mia for our dugong cruise but the recent strong winds had affected the visibility and we found it difficult to spot the shy dugongs. We spotted many but they quickly duck underwater and don't need to resurface for air for anther 6mins - very difficult creatures to photograph! Finally, we had to start heading back towards the jetty but then the dolphins appeared and performed gracefully for us.
We had a beautiful day on the water - it was an excellent boat and I particularly enjoyed spending time between dugong watching just lazing on the mesh between the hulls.

Our day ended in the hot tub again and we retired to cook chicken breasts in a creamy, green peppercorn sauce on rice. Since it is nearing Christmas I am experimenting with the pre-prepared puddings and we treated ourselves to a desert - steam pudding with hot custard!