Capella Lodge Lord Howe Island

... we saw a sea turtle swimming around right under our feet! Lu spotted it first and it kept swimming around us and right beside us, raising its head and checking us out then turning flips! I touched him and he did not even mind! He was just very curious. We played with him for a while then headed back before the storm came in.

... and Patagonia, and Tasmania (most recently). For the next hour, we climbed gradually through dense rain forest.  Waterfalls splashed around us, and we crossed rushing streams.  The vegetation was soaked from last night's rain, and soon we were too. Before he started guiding, Dean was the forest ranger on Lord Howe Island for 16 years.  His knowledge of the mountain's trees and bird ...

... amazing, and the lack of commercialised, touristy trimmings really appealed to me. And I was delighted to discover that this little gem was only a 2 hour flight away! I was desperate for a holiday, and this place was just what the doctor ordered, so I decided to see it for myself. It didn't disappoint. I flew to Lord Howe on 28/10/07. I was initially booked to stay one week, but as soon as I got off the plane, I knew I'd landed in paradise ...

Monday 9 July 2007 M: Had a shocking night - just coughed and coughed and coughed - and not even proper coughing that you feel you're doing because of some ghastliness in your lungs - this was just a tiny tickle and "if I just have one small cough, that'll clear it!" and then just another tiny tickle... What made it worse was that I knew I could fix the tiny tickle if I blew my nose but that involved leaning up on my ...

... It actually was amazing, such a variety of hard and soft corals with a huge number of anemones, clams and urchins. The fish life was also varied with a mix of sea fish like 'stinkers' and reef fish. The first thing that we saw was a ball of fins that turned out to be a school of catfish swimming in a clump, it really was weird! M: We were taken to several different sites where we saw different communities ...

... to get our masks sorted, and our flippers on. M: The experience was just breathtaking. I don't think I've snorkelled since I was 9 or 10 at Ramsgate, and then it was in a single big rock pool - amazing but not at all the experience of being in a big bay and being free to move from sandy bits to shallow coral to deep coral. And the fish! We saw hundreds and felt as if every one was a different ...

Friday 6 July 2007 M: Feeling much better this morning - that moment when you suddenly realize you just feel like a person with a cold rather than someone who has the whole world against them while they die a ghastly death. It was too windy to consider the beach so we set off to walk to The Clear Place. This was a good walk for me in my miserable state as it was very level and mostly in forest but even so ...

... path through woodland quite unlike the mainland, with spectacular views of the sea and the Admiralty Islets. When we got down to the water, still puzzling about exactly where to find the fish, we saw a little hut effort (containing wetsuits and other gear for hire) and a single set of booted footprints going straight down to the sea. So we followed them, and soon noticed some pretty silver fish about 25cm long in ...

... I found the SES picking up rubbish that had been deposited after the storm. I also found that the honesty system allows you to hire wet suits and snorkel gear. Walked home through the woods again, stopping to take a photo of a pretty red breasted bird that isn't in the book and then of a Rail with two black ball-of-fluff babies. Got instructions from Mandi, then went to the office to get Emma to book us places to eat, then I ...

... light as possible - luckily she didn't weigh them as mine was definitely over the 4kg limit and I was wearing (sweatily) my thick Aran jersey and my heavy Gore-Tex jacket and carrying both camera and purse full of change for phones - and let us through. We stood in a looong (but quite quick) queue for Subways and then a much shorter one for BoostJoos - the latter with a very perky girl who called us ...