Up bright and early with the birdies! I don't think you could sleep in here even if you wanted to, although Drew does an admirable job! We were picked up at 7am for our second reef day. With the other pick ups, it took about an hour to get to the actual Cape Tribulation, were we had to relinquish our shoes (!) and got on a small aluminum tender to go out to the boat. It was a 45+ foot converted catamaran sailboat. I still feel like I'm moving, actually! It took over an hour to get out there, the crew entertained us the whole way! We went to McKay reef, which is a couple of reefs south of where Captain Cook ran the Endeavour aground... on Endeavour reef! It was VERY choppy, and the morning snorkeling was pretty challenging for me. But we saw some interesting stuff... the normal big fish, lots of parrot fish crunch crunch crunching on the coral, then pooping out sand! They're responsible for most of the sand creation in the world, actually! I bet you did not know that. Lots of the same fish we saw at the other reef, but these seemed bigger, and there weren't nearly as many people around. We also saw the biggest puffer fish! Most of the time, the acquarium types are a little bigger than your thumb. This one was close to 2 feet long, but not puffed up. But impressive nonetheless! We also saw a blue spotted ray, and followed him around for a bit, until he was bored with us, and in the flash of an eye, he was gone!

I wasn't good for snorkelling too long in that chop, it really bothered my ears. So we went aboard, ate lunch, and listed to one of the guides talk about the fish. The afternoon was much more comfortable, the tide had gone down, and alot of the reef was exposed. Much easier going! Drew picked up an underwater camera, and I'm sure he got some fantastic shots... either that, or lots of shots of his finger! It's like swimming in an aquarium, way WAY better than Hanama Bay on Oahu! No comparison.

We left the reef around 2:30 or so, and I was feeling a bit queazy on the way back, so I had lots of trips to the stern to 'admire the sand quay'. I didn't get sick, though!

The bus ride back was fun. There is a very famous road sign here, it's by a big speed bump. They don't mess around with speed bumps here. They're about 3-4 feet long, and studded with jagged rocks. They DO NOT want you driving fast here, because of the cassowaries. This particular traffic sign is so famous, that it's on Queensland post cards. It's two yellow diamonds, the bottom one is the normal cassowairy sillouette. The upper one is supposed to be a speed bump, but 'someone' keeps coming and painting cassowary head and feet on each end of the speed bump, and putting the word 'after' on it, and the word 'before' on the cassowarry sillouette. Very effective, when we saw it the other day, it made us stop and really think, yeah, we don't need to be going this fast.

Well, the 'somone' who ammends the sign was none other then the skipper of the boat we were on! His wife and all of his kids were on the bus with us, and told us that 'someone else' DOESN'T like the fact that he paints the sign, and they go and change it back to what it's supposed to be. Then the skipper dude goes and changes it back! Evidently, this has been going on for quite awhile, and all the locals know the status of the sign at all times. 'It's messed up'.... 'It's back to norma'. And 'normal' means the skipper's way!

We saw it 'normal' the other day, but 'messed up' again yesterday. I'll let you know it's status for today! He said that he'd fix it tonight!

We had dinner here again, but got smart enought to only order one dinner between the two of us. This is evidently the place to be in the Cape Trib area, as lots of locals come here for the food. We ate our supper with Ludger and Ina, from Germany. After supper, we got our tourches and tried to do our own night walk. We saw a great stick bug, some bandicoots (look like rats, but they are actually marsupials, and related to kangaroos) and BATS! Flying Fox bats. They were very unhappy that we were shining a 5million candle light at them! We got alot of entertainment out of them. They were swooping us, and all you could here was this low, low 'foomp foomp foomp'. Those are VERY big bats.

Anyway, that was Sunday! We got to bet fairly early, by 10pm, and actually managed to stay in bed till past 8am on Monday!