Yesterday 'arvo', notice the colloquial, after we'd settled in I thought I'd invest in a six-pack. No amount of exercise is going to produce a bodily 'six-back' anymore, so In homage I bought six bottles of pale ale from the hotel bottle shop. It seems weird for a hotel that has its own bar to sell take-outs and about the same price as the bar price, but that's the way it is here!
After paying for the goods, I was walking back to our room when I met Lynn coming the other direction. She told me the fire alarm had gone off in our room and the rooms either side of us several times in the past 5 minutes. She went to pass on the news to reception who dispatched a man to investigate. There was no sign of fire in the block we were in, so he removed the alarm and went to fix it. He returned not long afterwards and refitted the alarm. All quiet.
At 2230, just as we were dozing off, the alarm on the ceiling started shrieking again. Clearly, it woke us up instantly, but it also woke the guests next door who has only just got their small child to sleep. Out on the patio in front of out room, once again we could see no sign of fire. I walked across to reception, but it was unmanned overnight. A sign suggested speaking to the duty bar manager or to phone a mobile phone number. This proved difficult as the bar was closed and we don't have a local mobile phone! Back at the room, I copied what the man had done earlier and removed the alarm from the ceiling and assisted our next door neighbour to do the same in their room. Peace returned.
Back in bed, it did concern us that the alarms clearly weren't being monitored anywhere and in any case, we were now in a room with no fire alarm. Finally, both of us managed to go back to sleep until morning.
Lynn was in reception soon after it opened in the morning and handed them our alarm and requested the hotel did something about it. Still all quiet. Then about 15 minutes later, all the alarms in our block went off again except in our room and our neighbour's room, because we'd disconnected them!
I went to reception to be told it had gone off because the handyman was trying to fix it! At this stage the duty manager appeared and expressed concern about our disturbed night and offered us another room in another block closer to the sea and a hotel charge card. He told us to have dinner and a bottle of wine on the house this evening! This seemed to be an equitable solution to me, so I gratefully accepted and we moved rooms. From our room patio, we look straight out into Coral Bay with the beach just 40 metres away.
After moving rooms, we got our snorkelling gear out, donned costumes and towels and headed for the beach again. Whilst Lynn snorkelled right in front of the hotel, I headed round to Purdies Point and swim out about 50 metres over the coral gardens. There is a slight current here that slowly pushes you back into Coral Bay itself. I stayed about 100 metres off shore and found the visibility to be good at 10-15 metres. The coral is beautiful here, some of the hard fan coral is enormous and the Staghorn coral a vibrant turquoise. There are plenty of fish both large and small, most feeding in or on the coral. I was lucky enough to find myself with an escort about 10 metres away at one stage, a Black-tipped Reef Shark. It's a beautiful creature, smoothly gliding through the water with its own attendant cleaner fish close to its mouth.
After about 45 minutes, I went back to shore to find Lynn sitting in the shallows, she had been looking at fish too closer to the shore. She had seen several Giant Clams only metres from the beach, they are quite impressive and react to a hand waved in front of them by closing their jaws. They are very colourful too.
Whilst sitting there we got talking to a lady from Exmouth who was there with her daughter and grandchildren for the day. They prefer it here to swimming in Exmouth! Whilst sitting there in the shallows, several rays glided past us, how good it that?
We took ourselves into town for a sandwich and ended up with spinach and feta pasty instead with free mini cakes (mincemeat slices) thrown in.
Later in the afternoon, we made the most of the reef on our doorstep and went out and snorkelled again. It is a pretty place, even at high tide it's hard to find any greater depth than 5 metres.
We limbered up for our free dinner by getting hold of the menu and salivating over it for a while. Choosing a wine too, took a while! It was sunset when we sat down outside overlooking the bay to eat! Crab linguini was good as were the fresh prawns, both caught here in Coral Bay. A bottle of Semillion Sauvignon Blanc from Western Australia seemed to match the food too. I have to report our free dinner went down very well and perhaps worth being disturbed last night!
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