Arrival at Lady Musgrave Island

After the over 90 minute quite nauseating to many ride we arrived at Lady Musgrave Island. In one the pictures of my hopeless attempt at snorkling you can see the island not too far away. The boat docks at a quite large pontoon raft from which these pictures were taken. Note that the water is comparatively calm, protected I guess by the barrier reef which is below where I am floundering. The raft is the base for the various activites. Some people sign up for scuba, some for reef fishing. But the core activities are snorkling, a trip in glass bottom boats to the island with a 40 minute or so walking tour, and rides around the reef in a semi-submersible. On these rides one of course looks at the reef and hunts for turtles. Actually I saw no turtles on this ride, but we had some nice encounters with some on the trip to the island. Everyone it seems is keen on the turtles. They nest on the islands but do not go ashore during the day. Due to the overcast day and the roiled water visibility and colors on the reef were not so good as they can be. Save for the comparative lack of color one could see places rather like those in Nemo.

The island was quite nice. Like most in the area it had been subject at some points to guano harvesting. But, or so we were told the island had been very fortunate. It was used somehow during the war, or perhaps it was not used but at any rate it was left alone for I think over 10 years. And some guano harvest had been skipped earlier because it was not quite rich enough to make it worthwhile. What was amazing was the number of nesting birds of various sorts, though predominantly terns. Each branch of virtually every tree was occupied by several nests. Unfortunately we neglected to bring the cameras so we have no pictures. There is a small campground on the island, but evidently camping is a bit expensive due to the boat trip and the need to bring everything- particularly water. The beaches are of course quite nice with wonderfully warm water.

On the trip one is supplied with morning and afternoon tea (cakes, cookies and tea or coffee) and a lunch. I ate lunch but, unsurprisingly enough, many did not. Trina for example, did a fair amount of snorkling but could not manage lunch or tea.

Around 3 we reboarded the boat. People were sort of supposed to take there original places but this rule was neither enforced nor obeyed. Each kid and Trina were in scattered seats on their own. Les and I ended up sitting on a sideways sort of bench. Unfortunately the sea was a bit rougher than when we came over. It did not seem quite as bad as we were on a diagonal with the wind. Fortunately the kids whom we could not see did not get sick. Trina however did not thrive. We could see her with head down over the bag. Les was on my left on the bench and someone (I am not sure why) sat down on my right. I didn' t like sitting sideways (no armrests or anything so it was hard not to side) so I stood up holding on to the galley. It was far too rough to walk around without considerable difficulty. Lucky I did as the person who had joined our bench started throwing up right after I left.

We did eventually get back though not til about 5. The weather prevented the boat from cruising at its normal speed.