Continued from yesterday”¦..

After the second dive lunch was served. It was a nice lunch with salad fixings and sandwich fixings, pasta salad and potato salad. We scarfed our food while the boat traveled to the next site, called Gone Again.

Forty minutes after finishing the last dive, we were back in for the third dive. Talk about pushing the limits on the surface interval between dives! This was another wall drift dive. This time the glass bottom boat took us up current and we drifted back to the main boat. This was by far the best dive of all. The variety of coral is amazing. At one point we went through a very small cave, which was kind of cool.

The pix below in order are: Eric swimming with Anthesis fish, Christi and Eric swimming together at the top of the wall, a starfish, a sponge, and another variety of nudibranch (sea slug). The last photo is a Christmas tree worm. We see have seen these all over the South pacific, too. They come in a variety of bright colors, and as you can see, they look more like little pipe cleaner toys than animals. They make little holes in the coral and when you get too close to them, they compress themselves and slide into their hole, completely gone from view. It is fun to watch them pop in and out of their holes.

This spot was really nice, but still not the amazing dive we were hoping for on the legendary Great Barrier Reef. The diving in French Polynesia was much better. Jaime has been diving for 37 years and has done over 1,000 dives. He was so excited about coming to the Barrier Reef and was really let down that it wasn’t the spectacular experience he was hoping for. We suspect the let down was because they selected shallow sites that work well for snorkelers the majority of the crowd and new divers.

After the dive, there was more coffee, tea, muffins and fruit out. They also came by with small slices of cake. They certainly fed us a lot and the food was pretty good. As soon as the boat docked in the marina, we were quickly herded back into the shuttle van, so we never got to check out Port Douglas.

For dinner we ventured a little farther from the marina to the main street that parallels the water, called The Esplanade. We had bugs, grilled crocodile, grilled kangaroo, and barramundi fish. Bugs are a popular local dish. We knew it was a shellfish, but not sure what kind. It turned out to be a slipper lobster, which is similar to crayfish. They were yummy.

Kangaroo is a red meat that has almost the same texture and taste as beef steak. Crocodile is a white meat similar in consistency to chicken, with an almost chicken-fish taste to it. For dessert we got a pavlova, which is a giant mound of meringue. Dinner was great.