No, not like that...come on, just because I'm from New Jersey...
In the morning, we slept as late as we wanted, which still wasn't that late because it was starting to get stuffy in the room. It's a shame that we couldn't keep the windows open overnight to let some fresh air in, but we were warned against it because there are ants and spiders and geckos. I do very much want to see a gecko, but maybe not in my room.
Breakfast (included...sweet) was at the restaurant, and it was by far the best meal that they do. There was a buffet portion with cheese and fruit and croissants and such, as well as a large piece of honeycomb in a frame. Fresh, clear honey was dripping off it and running down a slide into a dish, so you could serve yourself from that, but you could also scoop off bits of the comb and eat it raw. It worked best to suck out the honey and the good gooey out and then spit out the wax. Delicious. We also could order hot food off the menu, like omelettes and stuff, so we were well taken care of to start the day. And so were the birds --- the main eating area for the restaurant was outside under a tent, and there was a whole flock of little silvereyes hanging out over and among the tables, waiting for crumbs to drop. Sometimes they wouldn't even wait for crumbs to drop, they would hop onto tables while people were still eating and grab food right off the plates if you weren't vigilant enough. They would also congregate about three seconds after you'd left the table and snatch up the leftovers. Cheeky little things!
Here's a good view of one of the silvereyes, on the prowl for breakfast:
And some buff-banded rails, with the same idea:
There was also a white heron walking on railing surrounding the restaurant, but I think it wasn't nearly as interested in the leftovers, although it certainly wasn't afraid at all to be around people.
After breakfast, we changed into our swimsuits, lathered up with sunscreen, and picked up our snorkeling gear from the shop. We'd brought along our own masks and snorkels after a somewhat disastrous experience with leaky rented ones last time we'd snorkeled in Australia, so we only needed fins and wetsuits from the shop. The wetsuits were more for buoyancy than anything else, although it was nice to have a little extra warmth since the water was a little cooler on some of the days. They also make it much easier to snorkel because they help you stay at the surface; you don't really have to worry about floating, just propulsion, so you can just concentrate on moving in two dimensions and not three.
So by about 10 am we were suited up and on the beach and ready to go. We started off on the beach beside the jetty, since we'd seen some fish hanging around there when we arrived yesterday. We just walked into the water from the beach (backwards, because of the flippers), and we hardly had to swim more than a few meters before seeing fish --- there were some skinny ones close to the surface that I think were trumpetfish, and some larger ones with a single yellow spot on their back and a black stripe down their spine that weren't identified in our guide. A bit further on we hit a patch of swamp grass on the bottom, and then the water deepened out and there was coral! Right off the beach! The sun was a little patchy so it was hard to see the colors, but when the light did break through it was brilliant --- so many shades of pink and blue and green, some looking almost phosphorescent, with pink anemones swaying in the currents. And the fish...my God, there were hundreds of them, right there below us, in singles and schools and small groups, darting around the corals and nibbling food from the bottom and drifting with the current. I'd seen videos of the reef, of course, but I figured they were pretty carefully edited to just show the good stuff --- but no, it's actually just like that. Just shove off from the beach and before you know it, you're in a completely different world. Apart from the sheer number and variety of fish, the colors were what surprised me most of all. We saw fish in bright blue and bright yellow and some that had amazing combinations of all the colors, like the rainbow parrotfish. I had a really hard time remembering what we'd seen when we got back to shore, since it was so overwhelming, but we definitely saw several kinds of parrotfish, and unicorn fish, and lots of damsel fish and angel fish, and a lined surgeonfish, and some triggerfish, and some puffer fish, and some huge ones that I didn't have a chance to identify...and...and...and...
We swam for about an hour, then came back to shore and grabbed a quick pizza lunch at the bar by the public pool. After lunch, we rested a little bit, then went back in on the main beach, where the tide was going out and the water was a little calmer and warmer. It was a bit more crowded than in the morning, given that it was later in the day and we were swimming in the official swimming area, but we soon got out far enough that there weren't really any other swimmers around. We found a great anemone forest and swam around there for a while --- Michael swears he saw a clownfish, although I didn't, alas. It was an amazing experience to swim out and not see anything for a while but sand, then suddenly you spot a fish ahead in the gloom and follow it to a magnificent patch of coral. And then when you pass over that, you think that you've seen just about everything and it's all sand again, until another fish comes along and leads to you an even better patch. Wow wow wow.
We came back to shore when we got a little tired of swimming and went back to the room to shower before dinner. Every night there's fish feeding off the jetty at 5:00 with Sid. It was really windy on the jetty, but there were tons of big fish gathered for the feeding. The big black trevally (see also here) normally eat small fish, so Sid tossed them leftover pieces of tuna. They moved amazingly quickly to snatch up the fish, sometimes heading for the spot where it was going to land before it hit the water.
There was also a huge flowery cod (better picture here), swimming lazily up to the surface to eat bits of fish that Sid dropped nearly into its mouth. The vegetarian fish got fish food made out of compacted algae and other nutritious sea grass bits. The really cool ones eating the fish food were batfish, which looked like gigantic silver disks. Normally they feed on stuff floating in the water, so to get the fish food floating on the surface, they really had to stick themselves out of the water, enabling us to get a good view of them:
Sid gave the kids a chance to throw some food in themselves before tossing out the remainder all at once for a feeding frenzy.
Between fish feeding and dinner, we got our sunset drinks on the beach again. Then we took out our flashlight and went for a walk around the island on the boardwalk as it was getting dark. And I mean dark --- at times it was so dark in the jungle we couldn't see our feet. So we just stopped and listened to the buff-banded rails digging in the leaves for food, and wind rustling the branches overhead. We could see a few stars above, but most of the view was blocked by the trees. By the time we got back to the main hotel area for dinner, the moon was up. It was almost full, making it hard to see the stars, and it was so bright it actually cast a shadow.
Dinner was a slight improvement over last night, at least for me --- it turns out that the daily soup was vegetarian, a blend of roasted veggies with some cream, so I had that. Michael swapped for the risotto, which was a little improved over last night but not much. The service was pretty slow too; they didn't have quite enough waitstaff and there was also a big table of Australian tourists that was holding everything up. Can't complain too much, though.
The nature walk for the night was along the beach to see ghost crabs. There weren't many of them, since the moon was so bright and they prefer the dark, but we spotted a few tiny ones scurrying along the beach. They were about the size of small grapes, and their eyes poke up from their heads so they could see 360 degrees around them. They're completely white and very well camouflaged, and also stop and toss sand over themselves to hide when they feel threatened, so we could only see them when they moved. Sid also found a huge green sea turtle swimming in the water and eating the sea grass, very close to shore, as well as a big-ish reef shark swimming off the jetty. Erm, are we really going swimming with that? (Answer: no. Big sharks stay away from island during the day, when the water is too warm and too crowded for them. Whew!)
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