Earl's Anchorage Lord Howe Island

It has been a great few days on Lord Howe Island, but the very best part has to be snorkeling here. Yesterday afternoon, after my mom and dad got back from hiking up Mt. Gower (very steep, so Lu and I stayed with Sam, the nice lady who works at Arajilla and she took us to Ned's Beach to feed fish!), Dean, the man who took Mom and Dad up Mt. Gower invited us to go snorkeling. He took us to the very best spot on the island ...

... was staggering. One of Dean's signature accomplishments as the ranger was to hunt down every single feral goat and pig on the island, helping to return the ecosystem to its natural "pre-mammalian" balance. Finally, we broke out of the dense jungle about 500 meters above the ocean.  The clouds parted momentarily... For the remainder of this post, please go to: www.changeinplans.net Thanks.

... after just a couple of days, I arranged to extend my stay another 5 days! Words really cannot do justice to Lord Howe Island. It has World Heritage status for good reason. The sheer cliffs of Mounts Lidgbird and Gower towering over the southern end of the island, the lush kentia palm forests, and the incredible turquoise of the lagoon and surrounding waters, make for an absolutely stunning backdrop. There were lots of hikes, with fantastic ...

... elbow and was just painful enough to wake me thoroughly. Sigh. Eventually I had to sit up for the time it took me to suck a nasty cough lozenge, playing solitaire as the least disturbing for Gray who had been woken by my antics. G: Mandi coughed all night, so didn't get too much sleep, and neither did the rest of us, though we had to pretend to be asleep so she wouldn't get cross. It rained on and off most of the ...

... some areas particularly rich in fish, others in coral. We saw larger schools of fish than we had at Ned's, as well as skates and flutes, and many more of the really beautiful parrotfish. Also, just as we were starting out, a ball of catfish - about twenty of them all bunched together so they looked like something big and scary. At the last stop, two of the party went over to snorkel. One was a young woman who ...

... They ranged from a tiny little stripy remora about an inch long to the giant kingfish (which are a lot less scary when you're in their element - and look quite kindly at you instead of stupidly) but with most in the 6" to 12" range I suppose. And so beautiful! Even the "ordinary" little silver ones are like beautiful jewellery in their own space, and the parrotfish and their various glittering ...

... was a point when it was raining and I was cold and headachey and sorry for myself that the only reason I went on was that the thought of having to go all the way back to Ebbtide was worse. I plodded through those marvellous forests unable to raise a spark of interest, in a daze - and if I thought anything at all, it was that I wouldn't be able to remember any of it afterwards because I was in such a dumb ...

... shallows - aha! that must be them! But as soon as we got into the water up to our knees, we saw that the BIG shadows were not rocks but fish!! These were, we later learned, the kingfish. They are a metre or more long with yellow fins and tails and swim right into the shallows - it's quite frightening, having one's little toes in their space! They gobbled up our bread voraciously and would have followed us along the ...

... my rucksack together and went out for a walk. Went down to the visitors centre, and at the bottom of the steep bit got chatting to an old Danish lady who has been on the island for 18 months and is going tomorrow. She was going to have her hair cut. I tried to book things at the visitors centre, but didn't know our cottage number at Ebb Tide so the lady wasn't very forth coming. I then walked down lagoon road toward the ...

... and "beautiful" and asked - and remembered later! - where we were going - and then found some seats overlooking the tarmac to eat our breakfast. Twenty minutes before our flight we wandered off to buy some magazines - my airport indulgence - and sunnies and then down to gate 49 where the other thirty passengers were assembling. Our seats - row 9 - were in the last row which went right across like ...