We woke up around 8:00 and went straight to the beach --- no breakfast, no coffee, just swimsuits and snorkels (okay, and snorkeling masks and fins and wetsuits and flip-flops and towels, but you get the idea). We were in the water by 8:30. It had rained overnight, making the water a bit colder than yesterday, and it was actually still raining when we got to the beach, but we were rewarded for our efforts with a gigantic full rainbow over the water.
It was just us and a nice German family in the water that morning, and we headed out towards the jetty to get to the corals. The tide was coming in so the current was very strong, making swimming difficult, so we only stayed in for about a half an hour. Then we had a quick (hot!) shower to rinse off and refresh, and then went down to the restaurant for breakfast. A huge one. Part of which was eaten by a buff-banded rail when Michael's head was turned. I had eggs again, and Michael had the Japanese breakfast with rice, miso soup with noodles, tofu, and various pickles.
After breakfast, we decided to take a walk all the way around the island to give our food a chance to settle before going back in the water. We started off along the boardwalk and got to the part where we had to go along the beach to get all the way around. It was still raining, but only lightly, so we figured we'd chance it. We could see a family of crested terns hanging out along the rocks...
...and some beautifully windswept driftwood on the windward side of the island.
There were also bunches of snails and barnacles clinging to the rocks where we were walking, so we had to be careful not to step on them. But before we could get too much farther along, it started raining in earnest, luckily when we were still pretty close to the boardwalk. We ducked back into the jungle for shelter and tried to wait it out, but it only started raining harder, so we packed it in and went back to the room. Had a short nap, and when we woke up, the rain had blown over and the sun was shining again. Swimsuit time!
Hard to believe that just last week I was bundled up in a coat and sweater, freezing cold in the Blue Mountains.
Our second snorkeling trip of the day was off the swimming beach, like yesterday, only this time it was much earlier in the day and the tide was in, so we didn't have to worry about bumping our knees or our fins on the corals as we swam over them. It was a fantastic dive, lots of sunlight playing among the corals and tons of fish --- so many that we could hear the little clicking sounds as they munched on plankton and bits of seaweed. Things got a little choppy when a seaplane took off nearby and caught us in its wake, but after clearing our snorkels a few times everything was calm again. I spotted a huge sea cucumber, and Michael saw a starfish. We stayed out for well over an hour before getting out to have a nice rest on the beach (yes, Mom, under the shade of an umbrella with lots of sunscreen). Michael took a trip out to get us two tinnies of beer (the local boring lager, XXXX Gold), and I reciprocated a little later with ice cream (vanilla and chocolate caramel). The best kind of lunch.
Later in the afternoon as the sun was getting lower, we went back to the room to shower, delayed only by me spotting (and needing to photograph) a large pheasant-like bird off of our balcony: a pheasant coucal, aka swamp pheasant.
At 5:00 was fish feeding, with more batfish and black trevallys and even three black-tipped reef sharks.
There's also a pair of ospreys nesting just offshore, and we got to see them winging by in search of dinner, but too far away to photograph. But we did get a good view of an entire tree full of black and white herons:
One of the white ones patiently sat for its close-up:
Then we stopped by the picnic area for our sunset drinks and had a chance to chat a bit with the German family we'd met on the beach that morning. The oldest daughter is studying in Australia for the year, so the rest of them came down to visit her on vacation. They were nice enough to take some pictures of us:
Awww.
For dinner, since it was our third night with the same menu and since the staff seemed a bit calmer now that the big group had left, we got bold enough to ask our waitress if she could get the chef to put together something nice from the wide array of side dishes served with the meat courses. And it was our lucky night: the waitress told us that the chef on that evening was himself vegetarian, so he'd take care of us. So we were rewarded for our efforts with crispy blue cheese gnocci in a cream sauce with spinach and roasted tomatoes. Now that's more like it! We also ordered dessert for the first time, which was a yummy coconut parfait in keffir lime sauce.
While we were eating dessert, I was looking up to watch the moths circling the light fixtures, and saw a gecko just at the top of the lights. I pointed it out to Michael so he could see, and then we ran a bit of a psychology experiment: two people looking up quickly leads to more people looking at the same spot to see what we were looking at, and soon we had half the dining hall craning their necks to examine the light fixture. So we explained to our dining companions at the nearby tables about the gecko, including two German girls traveling with their mother, who were very excited.
All of this staring attracted the attention of one of the waiters, and he came over to us to ask what we were looking at. When I pointed out the gecko, he shrugged and said "You want to see a gecko? I'll get you a gecko." And in thirty seconds he came back and handed a gecko to one of the German girls! It was very small, barely bigger than my pinkie finger, and bright orange. Apparently they like to hang out on the bottles of grenadine at the bar and so are easily caught. The by-now-terrified gecko was passed around to us and I got to hold it --- firmly, so it didn't get away. The pads on the bottom of its feet felt a little like cat's paws, mostly soft but with a little tickle. I handed it off to Michael, and he took it across the dining room to show to the German family we'd befriended. Eventually it made its way back to the German girls seated next to us, who debated taking it home with them before (wisely) deciding to let it go. By the end of dinner, it had made its way onto one of the pipes holding up the tent over the dining terrace, where we were able to get a picture of it.
We skipped the nature walk since we'd already seen the underwater observatory at night, but we did go along the jetty to check for turtles and sharks (none present) and to look at the stars. Then, blissfully, bed.
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