Sunday, November 1, 2009

Again, there was a delay at breakfast - two people were late and/or didn't show up (probably from the night before) - but fortunately Chloe and Jess did a great job, literally running around to keep up. After breakfast, we did the walk up to Cook's Look, a little over 1000 feet up. The walk was a litle harder than Malabar, but not too bad. There were signs around the walk that discussed what we were seeing, and what historical relevance it had. Interestingly, we found out that Lizard Island was in fact a continental island - it used to be connected to the mainland when the oceans were lower, like Kangaroo Island.

From the top, there were good views all around, but the clouds that kept us cool(er) also interfered with the views. We could make out the mainland (Cape Flattery - faint in the upper right of this picture) a bit, and could also see the outer reef as well. It was really windy at the top, as the mountain was no longer holding back the wind. The Lagoon on the southwest side looked very nice - we decided we should check it out before we left. Unlike Mount Gower, the walk down was not worse than the walk up. On the walk down, we picked out some places in Watson's Bay to come snorkel in the afternoon, seeing some giant fish near the Eastern rocks.

We celebrated our walk by having a bunch of cocktails, talking to the bartender Filip, who was from Sweden. The other bartender, Remi, was interestingly also from Sweden. Lunch was very good, Chicken Risotto. At lunch, we debated "survival of the fittest" for the global plant world - whether "invasive" plants such as Eucalyptus in California are such a bad thing. Also at lunch, we told Filip how to make a Lava Flow.

After lunch, we got ready, then went to Watson's Bay. At first we walked out quite a ways, then swam out a ways, to a giant clam garden. The coral was good, but the wind was making things tough - blowing us away from shore and near the coral - so we came back in and went further down the beach. Near the rocks - where we had seen the giant fish walking down the hill - things were excellent. There were fish everywhere, calmer water, and we saw some giant clams and also the giant fish we had seen from the hillside earlier - they were green humphead parrotfishes and a number of smaller fish feeding on the coral.

We came back around 4:30, then relaxed for a bit. We went down to the Blue Lagoon for sunset, but left a little prematurely since we needed to get back while we could still see. Dinner was a bit late, and we talked about healthcare and genetic engineering. We never talk about anything remotely heavy or intellectual at home, so this was really odd, it must have been the booze.