Today Kel surprised herself.  We were booked in on a 3 hour quad bike snorkelling tour.  Kel hadn’t ridden a quad bike before, so took Blake along for moral support.  Hannah came with me figuring she’d be somewhat safer.  We were the only people on the tour.

Once we left the confines of Coral Bay and engaged 4wd and started heading up a few dunes it was all going well.  Well … that was until we lost Kel …

We’d crested a hill and had waited awhile, but Kel wasn’t following.  Jason, our guide, went back to try and find her, figuring she might have gotten bogged or something.  But no … Kel had taken a wrong turn and scooted off down some track heading god knows where, at light speed, to catch us.  Blake undoubtedly was screaming “Go Faster, Mum!” all the while.  Eventually Jason found her, flagged her down and shepherded her back onto the straight and narrow.

Meanwhile, Hannah and I had started a signal fire and proceeded to cook lunch.  The entree’s were nearly sizzling when they all came back…

All concerned decided that it’d be better if Kel was in the middle of the group.

It wasn’t too long until we got up to Maud’s Landing, where we drove to yesterday the easy way.  Hannah was having a ball. She was even standing up and taking photos while we were going along. From there it was along the beach up until Oyster Bridge.

We stopped there for a few minutes to catch our breath.  The next section had a fairly steep start right up off the beach.  Kel’s gung-ho attitude (read: ability to floor it) had her up and off the beach easily.  It took me two goes to get up there, but I did have a good go at getting the bike bogged on the first attempt.

A good run up got me through it 2nd time round.  From there it was a meandering path through the dunes until we got to Little Lagoon.  This was our first snorkelling stop.  We had to swim out about 50m and then across 25m.  Once there we could see turtles feeding amongst plenty of other fish and coral.  Pretty darned awesome really.  I managed to get a cramp in my foot and headed back first, but the others stayed for awhile.

Snorkelling is a great way to learn how unfit you are.  We all got back to the beach buggered.

Back on the bikes we went on a little further to a lookout.  Only 3 bikes would fit up the top … but again I couldn’t quite get up there.  *sigh* … must be Hannah’s fault.  Good view from up there though.

Back on the bikes again we went back to Oyster Bridge.  Oyster Bridge is very cool.  It’s a two finger reef just off the beach.  The fingers remove almost all the swell.  It makes for an exceptional snorkelling spot.  We got to see a wide variety of fish here and lots of coral.  I couldn’t identify most of the fish, and have managed to forget which other ones Jason told us about.  There was plenty to soak in.

Blake and Hannah had swapped places.  Blake, seeing his mothers newfound lack of fear, had his self preservation gene kick in and was riding with me.  On the way back to Coral Bay we stopped at a couple of places. The first was at the top of this pristine dune overlooking the whole area.  No other wheel tracks up there!  Awesome spot.  Jason, the thrillseeker, had decided that Kamikaze Kel was ready for the ultimate challenge … a massive drop down one dune followed by a full throttle climb up another.

Kel was giving me the “I’m not happy about this” look … but went ahead and did the challenge with ease.  I followed her down too and for once made it up the hill on the other side … I knew then that the previous failed attempts were all due to having Hannah on the back.

A bit more hooning around the dunes soon had us back at Coral Bay.  A big thanks to Jason for giving us this experience.

The kids & Kel headed down the beach for yet more snorkelling while I had an investigate on what’s going on with the reversing camera.  Kel was nearly ready to throttle them both when they got back.  Overtired would be the polite way to describe them…

I found one of at least two problems with the camera.  We’ve had some fried wiring at the back of the van. Damn lucky that there wasn’t a fire actually.  Melted wiring was the least of the problem.  The wiring that melted was next to another high current wire.  If that had shorted out then there certainly would have been a fire.  As it is though I’ll need to run another power wire for the camera once we get somewhere with an electronics store.  The other problem requires running a new wire up past the airbags in the car, so that can wait until I feel brave again.

Dinner was a stir fry tonite while we all contemplate whether we are brave enough to do the activity booked in for tomorrow…

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