MY TRAVEL JOURNEY
Turtle Dancer
Holly Wainwright, author and co-host of Mamamia Out Loud, went to Sal Salis looking for rest and somewhere far from the ordinary. On her last day in the water, a green sea turtle seemed to have the same idea.
WORD & PHOTOS Holly Wainwright
On my trip to Sal Salis, I danced with a turtle. It’s not something you do every day. But to be honest, nothing that happened at Sal Salis was. It’s a place that lifts you so far out of your ordinary world, you have to check your feet are still on the ground. And sometimes, they’re not. They’re underwater, dancing with turtles. Sal Salis sits in dunes between a pink-pebbled beach and red outback earth on the Ningaloo Reef. Ningaloo is the largest fringing reef in the world, which means it’s so close to land that you don’t need to get into a boat to explore it. Exmouth, a two-hour flight north of Perth, is the gateway, and Sal Salis is a eco-luxury lodge an hour from town in the Cape Range National Park. The unplugged peace is part of its pull. Because of the precious environment at Sal Salis, the lights are low, noise is minimal. Your temporary home is a raised safari tent complete with a wooden deck, swinging hammock, ensuite bathroom, big comfy bed, and the most calming soundtrack you can conjure: the lap of turquoise water click-clicking on coral stones.
If you’ve travelled all the way to Sal Salis, you are looking for something. Peace. Beauty. Perspective. Calm. I went there with my great friend Lucy, and we wanted all those things. Lucy had been through significant health issues, and I was the ordinary kind of burnt out. We wanted a rest, but we wanted adventure, too. We wanted to be somewhere far from our versions of normal, and to do incredible things. And then we wanted to lie in a hammock and read a book, snooze, and drink tea.
Well, we nailed that. Or at least, Sal Salis did. It’s exactly the kind of place where you can do as much or as little as you want. You can hammock-rot. You can play Scrabble on the lodge’s deck. You can stroll on the sand, spend the day swimming and snorkelling right there at the private beach. You can use the kayaks, the paddleboards, the masks and flippers. Or you can choose not to do any of that, and just lounge about on the shaded beach chairs. You can be ferried off to your whale shark expedition and be brought back for hot tea and cake to share stories and notes. You can help yourself to the open bar.
One morning, we got up early for a guided hike at Yardie Gorge, watching the sunrise creep up over the dark ochre cliffs, sending rock wallabies scattering, walking the gorge’s trail on the fossilised coral of an ancient ocean.
And then one day, I danced with a turtle. It was the last of three snorkelling expeditions Lucy and I had taken, all a short guided drive from Sal Salis. On those trips, we had swum with huge cowtail rays and little blue spotted ones, we had listened to parrot fish nibbling coral, and followed reef sharks around huge coral bommies. But I almost didn’t go to Osprey Bay for this last snorkel, wanting to soak up another beautiful morning at the beach. But something told me to go. And there they were – the green sea turtles, gliding above and below us. One swam over my head, and she looked like she was flying, and then hovering, and then deciding to linger a little with me. We ducked down and glided back up, swam in circles, and rose to pop our heads up for air at the same moment. I can’t explain the feeling, even now, but I think it’s called awe.
We achieved the goal of being far from real life. Although. I don’t know if life gets more real than the ridiculous colours the sky displayed every evening. The light changing bright silver-blue to soft gold was the daily sign to gather near the Lodge. Lucy and I would collect a glass of something cold and bubbly and walk along the water’s edge as the light tripped through its colours. The fins of small reef sharks zipped through the water, and the sand turned pink. Then we would head to the deck for the rest of the sunset’s light show, pinks and purples layering themselves across the horizon as Sal Salis’s staff brought out canapes and cocktails. As the sky faded, dinner began, three courses at a long table, matching wines. Coffee, dessert and conversation about who went where and saw what today. Why do they come to Sal Salis? What do they want to take home? Then, every night, we would pad back under the stars through the dunes to our so-called tents, knowing we had found what we came for. And that we were falling asleep in the kind of unimaginably special place where turtle dancing was possible.
THE DETAILS
Sal Salis offers 15 Wilderness and one Honeymoon Tent on the edge of the UNESCO-listed Ningaloo Coast, steps from the world’s largest fringing coral reef. Every stay is all-inclusive, with breakfast, lunch, three-course dinners, airport transfers and guided snorkelling. Stillness that’s increasingly hard to find.