Parents Day 13

Wednesday

Our snorkeling day at the Low Isles! We hopped a bus for the hour-long ride north to Port Douglas, pressing our faces to the glass, rattling over windy mountain roads with just a few rocks between us and the cliff dropping down to the sea. We saw termite mounds as high as your waist and burned-out areas of scrubby tangled trees, long untouched stretches of yellow sand, the haze of rain far out on the ocean. We saw a horse farm with a big open field that looked like it was growing a crop of WALLABIES. There must have been hundreds of them, little brown and bent-over with their noses to the ground, grazing or whatever it is Wallabies do.

Finally we arrived and hopped aboard our cool 100-foot Cat. There weren’t more than one hundred people onboard, far below full capacity, and the sail to the island was only forty minutes. Mom and I rented lycra suits for five dollars each, to protect against jellyfish—bluebottle season typically doesn’t start til mid-November, but it was close enough that we didn’t want to take chances. So we looked like Catwoman and Catgirl as we kicked off in our snorkel gear.

Our somewhat sleazy “marine biologist” was giving a tour to the group, but Catwoman kept turning left when everyone else was turning right, and at last I decided to follow her as she obliviously forged her own trail around the reefs. She certainly had the right idea, as it turned out: she was the only one in the group to see a starfish. But she did miss the first turtle sighting, and moments later, as she kicked her way farther out into open ocean, Jean the Lifeguard drove his little boat over to ask if she was okay. Jean wore a tight little red wetsuit and a big floppy straw hat and had a big white patch of zinc on his nose. We kept swimming, but closer to the tour group, and we saw Nemo—a pack of cute little clownfish darting in and out of their anemones and looking at us—and I discovered a turtle hiding in a cave about fifteen feet below us, and Mom found a snail. Meanwhile, Dad enjoyed a glass bottom boat tour and lunched on prawns, and later, went on a tour of the island.

Exhausted and sunbaked by the end of the day, we cleaned off and went for dinner at the only restaurant in town, a little tiny BYO Greek place (we BYO’d beer and cider) that played Spanish mariachi music and served the best pizza I’ve had so far in Australia.