Leanda-Lei Apartments Lord Howe Island

... Lookout. It was a tough climb up - first we had to ride our bikes to the path, then we hike up a steep very green pasture, then up and down over rocks and past sheer cliffs to the lookout. On the way, I saw lots of huge golden orb spiders - the females are big and the males are tiny. I even watched one catch a bee and start wrapping it up to eat it. At the summit, we had a picnic and looked at the view all the way down ...

... said that growing up here was great - you could surf and swim on the beach every day and it is so safe! Lord Howe is also a World Heritage Site because it is the southernmost coral reef so you can see lots of fish that you can't see anywhere else. And that is what we did - first we saw lots of fish and coral under the glass, then we stopped out in the harbor and went snorkeling. Even Tallulah put on a mask and snorkeled. It was amazing ...

... more accessible! Swimming so close to a huge green sea turtle I could almost touch it, is something I will never forget. But the best thing about Lord Howe, was the people and lifestyle. The place is so laid-back. There are very few cars (most people ride bikes), no traffic lights, no supermarkets or ATMs. And everything is so clean - there was not a single piece of litter anywhere, and everyone recycles. No one locks their doors, everyone is ...

... This bird too, must be using infrasound. As expected, it was a small russet bird with a big beak - the wood hen. Mandi spent some time trying to get good pictures of it, and I recorded its cry on my palm, for later analysis, though I doubt that the thing has the bandwidth. M: Then we went down to Ned's with all the snorkelling pakkerasie - just forgot the poor old kingfishes' bread!! And after eating their brother ...

... all the way home. It was quite sweet. I was quite sorry we weren't snorkelling until I saw them freezing to death on the way home. And as Gray said, most of what made yesterday's experience so good was being able to come up from the beach and have a hot shower and get into non-salty, dry clothes! G: We stopped off at a number of holes, deep spots in the coral. At the second, our two intrepid snorkellers ...

... to do the same thing. It's like breathing - or perhaps being part of some big breathing creature. As well as the fish, we saw some other amazing things - the coral and the seaweed go without saying, of course - some literally fluorescent - but also HUGE anemones and urchins - the latter the size of soccer balls (although it is hard to judge with the magnification of the mask.) A huge sea-slug about ...

... suburban lawn - with a badly positioned bench (behind a bush so you can't see anything from it) on a scrubby hillside. With a lovely view (except from the bench!) but we nearly missed the best of it. I don't generally usually use binoculars as I find it difficult to hold them steady and to fuse the image. But I had a quick look through Gray's fancy new ones - seeing as I had lugged the damn things back from ...

... a solid fish, absolutely bejewelled in blue and purple and red and green. Stunning. G: When we had run out of bread, we walked to the end of the beach and back. At the near end, we again came across shoals of the smaller fish and a pair of gaudy parrot fish. They are so unlikely. A man came down with buckets of food - bread and fish pellets that unleashed such a frenzy. He said that they are no longer allowed to use ...

... to chat briefly to some people on their way up. They were a gregarious Irishman from Seattle and his partner as well as a couple of Sydneysiders. Went the long way home via the post office, and got in at midday. I think I overdid it as I coughed a lot all afternoon. Mandi says that she is feeling better with a quiet morning. Though, during the afternoon she started to get feverish and complained of being cold. Sometime ...

... at the back. It was like a bench seat at the back of a bus. Unfortunately there was a mother and toddler on the other side, so I spent quite a bit of the 700km flight entertaining the child - who also had a bad cough. We flew into cloud, but it cleared for the approach, and what a beautiful sight it was, all bush-clad with the two peaks towering nearly vertical out of the one side. The middle has some ...