Day 28 recap (Tues Mar 8)

[Scott] We woke up well rested today around 8am and headed over for breakfast. It’s setup like a buffet with some warm foods like eggs, bacon, and sausage, and some cold foods such as yogurt, fresh fruit, pastries, cereals, and toast. Stef really liked the egg McMuffin thing she had which had egg, cheese, and salmon on it. We decided to take the complimentary snorkel lesson at 9:30am to see if we could pick up any good tips, since we were planning on doing a lot of snorkeling this week. This is when we met Paul, who taught the lesson. He’s a really funny Australian guy, and he would be out on the snorkel boats with us throughout the week. We love the Australian sarcastic sense of humor, and this guy really has it! There wasn’t anything earth shattering in the lesson, as snorkeling is a pretty straightforward activity. He gave us a good tip for blowing water out of the snorkel by saying “two” and he noticed that our new masks were really foggy and spit wasn’t clearing it up. He said we needed to rub toothpaste on them to get the clear finish off – which worked really well! So we spent a few minutes in the swimming pool with all our snorkel gear on, and then we headed out with the group for a bit to “The Gantry” snorkeling area on the reef – right near the pool.

At 11am we took our first snorkel boat trip with Paul and Kate and a full boat of about 15 snorkelers. Kate also has a good sarcastic wit like Paul. In her briefing in the harbor, she showed us where to find the life jackets and how to put them on, and told us that if anything were to happen out on the sea, we may need to use the radio. She said to just tune it to Channel 99, press the button and say something like “Heron Island Help Help”. Then she said, “they should get back to you within two weeks if you’re polite!” The waters were a bit rough, but Paul was driving the boat and didn’t seem to care. We were all getting wet as the boat slammed down off the waves, and there was “The Guy” at the front of the boat who acted like he had never been on the water – or out of the house for that matter. (Paul later nicknamed this guy “Little Buddy”) “Little Buddy” was laughing hysterically and yelling every time a wave splashed him, and kept going up closer to the front of the boat to not miss a single wave. Then we hit “The Big Wave” where the bow of the boat came straight down off a 10 ft wave and everybody flew up out of there seats a foot or so and crashed back down on their butt. Everybody screamed a bit, but “Little Buddy”, who was now soaked from head to toe and couldn’t even open his eyes from all the saltwater, was convulsing in excitement now and jumping up and down. I’d say he’s lucky he didn’t get launched right off the boat! After about a five minute boat ride we got out to our snorkeling spot, which is called “Coral Canyons” located on the edge of Heron Reef. The guides buddied everybody up and told us the few signals we needed to know, and told us to all stay reasonably close together and drift down the reef in a group so they don’t have to be watching all over the ocean. They told us how important it is to not touch anything and not to get too close to the wall of the reef, and then they came around and defogged everybody’s goggles. Stef jokingly asked if it was spit that they were spraying on our goggles, and Kate quickly replied “yeah we all sat around and spit into this bottle last night after dinner. It’s a competition among the employees!”

Then they said the pool is now open for one hour, so we jumped in with our underwater cameras in hand. We were the first ones to jump in and looked down to have our first look at the edge of the reef where the really large bright coral is with huge numbers of fish. The guides just stay in the boat and keep a lookout for everybody and monitor the ocean currents. We did a one hour drift snorkel from one of their moorings to another a little ways down the reef. The water was a bit cloudy, and Paul said that was probably because the tide was moving out fairly quick at this particular time and pulling lots of sediment off the reef surface. Soon after we got in the water, our skin started stinging a bit in spots. At first we didn’t think much of it, but then as it was happening more and more, and we realized there were little jellyfish everywhere around us – about the size of a #2 pencil eraser. It never really hurt enough to matter and eventually we got clear of them, but it was our first experience with marine stings nonetheless. We had a good hour of snorkeling, and they put the lifejacket up on the bow of the boat indicating our time was up. We headed back to the resort, took a shower, and headed over for the buffet lunch. They have 3 or 4 cold salads to choose from, and maybe 6 hot dishes to choose from. They have heaps of food and all of it is really good. (heaps is a favorite word for Australians) Half of today’s hot dishes were an Italian theme, and the Chicken Cacciatore was really good.

After lunch we went on the reef walk. Each day they have a schedule of activities you can choose from. Almost everyday they have a reef walk, and then some days they have a walk on the island, or about birds, or on the island’s university research station. These are all guided and no additional charge (unlike the snorkel boat). A marine biologist named Jason was our guide for the two hour walk. We had a group of about 12 people. They schedule this at low tide so you can walk all the way out on the reef in water up to your knees. The water on the reef at low tide is a really beautiful light green color. He showed us all of the different types of coral and various marine animals that we passed along the way. All of the coral on top of the reef is small since it can’t grow any higher than the height of water at low tide. The big stuff is out on the wall of the reef edge, where the waves are breaking. Jason would pick up the various sea creatures (not the coral) such as a variety of sea cucumbers and a sea hare (like a snail) and describe how they function and their role in the ecosystem. We each carried something called a sea scope which basically looks like a megaphone with a lens on the small end. This allowed us to look at the underwater life, since you can’t see much looking down through all the ripples and reflections on the water surface. We learned a lot from Jason and he was able to answer all of our questions, and it didn’t feel at all like we were at school. The best part is that now when we’re out snorkeling we’ll know the names of the various types of coral and know what to look for. We’ve noticed that marine biologists really like their marine jokes. Jason told us that the pearl fish actually lives inside a sea cucumber’s butt for long periods of time and often eats the gonads if he’s not feeling up to hunting for food. He said, “This is why we don’t advise skinny dipping on the reef!” to which everybody chuckled and groaned.

On Tuesday night they have a BBQ buffet in the lounge instead of the usual three course meal in the restaurant. They had lots of seafood, lamb, and a good steak as well. Also, they had an assortment of salads and fresh fruit, and a large dessert table. Stef’s eyes almost permanently rolled back into her head as she ate the Pavlova (similar to meringue). The lemon strawberry mouse was really good as well. They had a really good guitarist playing throughout that we enjoyed listening to on the mezzanine. He played a lot of James Taylor, some Jack Johnson, and a variety of other tunes. We really love the relaxing pace here!