8 September 2005 (Day 3 – Helen’s Birthday)

What’s happening? The sun isn’t even up and we’re both awake! This does however give Daniel the opportunity to set up the tripod and take photos from our balcony of the sunrise, looking out over Catseye Beach as the sun edges over the abrupt outcrop of the Island Lookout.

After an early breakfast we settle down to the business of deciding what to do today. As it is Helen’s birthday Daniel has a few suggestions… we enjoyed snorkelling at Catseye Beach so much we want to snorkel again, but as the main beach gets a lot of traffic from the resort catamarans & jetskis we decide we’ll try walking to Coral Cove and phone room service to order a picnic hamper to take with us.

The resort helpfully provides a little map of the walking trails around the island, with various sections of the trails marked “moderate”, “challenging” and “steep”. The trail we had chosen is mainly rated “moderate” with a small section rated “steep”. After climbing steadily for the first 5 minutes of the “moderate” section of the trail, we were seriously worried about the “steep” section! However, as we’d seen a small skink and 2 goannas on the way we kept going – it’s got to be a good day ahead when you see a skink and goannas!

After an hour of cautiously climbing up and scuffling down extremely steep, gravelled trails we eventually slid down into Coral Cove. The chainsaw we’d heard turned out to be staff from Safari Tours setting up the cove for one of their 4WD safaris later that night. We moved up the beach as far away from them as we could and started on the hamper – pastries!

Finally we got out snorkelling! Most of the bottom closest to the beach is sand with a few rocks and shells. It is full of little gobi-type fish (we still have to ID them properly) living in holes with shrimp! They dived back into their holes very quickly if we came too close, but sometimes we could just see the shrimp rearranging the pebbles and shells making up the entrance to their hole.

We headed out to the rocks on the right of the beach. For a while it seemed pretty deserted, then we started to see a few small fish. Then suddenly Daniel saw the most spectacular find of the day – a beautiful 6 banded angelfish hiding in the crevasse between 2 rocks. This fish is quite large, maybe 14 inches high and at least a foot and a half long, and has a beautiful iridescent blue tail and white and black banding on the body. It is also incredibly fast! At one stage it got sick of us trying to photograph it and shot like a rocket out of it’s crevasse, swam for 20m or so and dived into another crevasse.

We also saw a spotted fish with big googly eyes (still to id), and a couple of big sea snails crawling over the rocks – these are quite picturesque as they have sort of tasselled edges which wave in the water like strands of seaweed. We left the rocks and swam out into the middle of the cove, where we discovered a bit of a coral and seaweed garden, with the occasional giant clam and heaps of sea cucumbers lying all over the sand.

Then it was time for that hamper! Marinated chicken rolls, antipasto, a cheese plate, and a couple of mini bottles of shiraz… what a way to dry off! After prodding Helen out of the wine-and-sun laziness we headed back in for another snorkel. This time we headed for the rocks on the left of the cove, but they were very disappointing. We headed back in, although Daniel got sidetracked photographing the remains of the carapace of a turtle we found in shallow water.

Then it was time to dry off a little, have the fruit from the hamper, pack up our bags and head back to the hotel. We took the alternate route back, a shorter steep climb which led to the road near the airport. One of the shuttle buses gave us a lift for part of the way, which saved us a hill, and we finally got back to the hotel around 5.15. The verdict? Coral Cove was interesting, but disappointing compared to Catseye Beach, or indeed compared to Shelly Beach at Manly!

After all that walking we decided to head for the resort’s one spa, located at one of the nearby pools. When we got there it was already occupied by a couple with a small child. After a moment’s indecision we slid in, and were joined shortly by another couple and their 2 small children. We didn’t stay long.

On the way up in the elevators we were chatting with a couple we’d talked to on the dive boat. They were going out on a snorkel trip the next day. We’d already been thinking of taking something like this, and as they’d said that the trip doesn’t go out everyday, when we got back to our room we decided to see if we could book in. Despite it now being after 6pm we still got through and booked for the next day.

The day wasn’t over yet! Daniel had organised something special for Helen’s birthday, so after warm showers – or, in Daniel’s case, a warm bath for tight calves – we took the bottle of Krug Helen’s sister had given us as a wedding present and which we’d nursed all through the flight to the island, and headed down to the marina.

Daniel had booked us into Mariners, the island’s seafood restaurant, and had managed to talk them into letting us bring the Krug. We ordered, of course, the seafood platter. Oh boy! It had the biggest king prawns we’d ever seen, fat crabs, oysters, scallops, mussels and bugs. All of the seafood was beautifully fresh and tasted great. We finally staggered back to the hotel and fell into bed.