Our second day on Hook Island was a laid-back existence on the beach. Jason and Pat have been doing a lot of bird watching and we make up bird-like names for each other. I'm the "burgundy shuffling chomping monster" because of this routine I do with theme music: "Bump, Bump, Barumpum-pum-pump" followed with a hiss and a chomp. In Australia bird watchers are called "twitchers," for which we constantly make fun of Pat and Jason. Our morning is always started with a coffee routine from Pat and Jason discussing the "smack" and generally encouraging each other.

Our morning snorkel had been planned for the spot outside our tent, but we instead decided to go to Pebble Beach on the other side of the island because visibility was miserable. I'm very glad we did. The coral on the other side was plentiful, large, and stunning. We got to see a sea turtle and many, many cool fish, including several schools of them. Snorkeling is great practice for scuba. One thing I especially like about it is that you can talk to each other while doing it-which teaches me more about fish identification. It was fun to snorkel someplace where I got to practice going really deep which I love. I feel more graceful in the water than on land, for the most part. It did end up being much clearer on that side of the island. Angie especially remembers canyons of coral to look down on as you snorkeled.

We were quite hungry and exhausted after such an intense snorkel and lazed around in the afternoon, writing postcards to mutual friends. Angie and Pat went for a second snorkel. That evening we had dinner and went for a walk on the beach and then down to a big dock on another part of the island. We got to watch the ¼ moon set, but not before observing it through the binoculars-always an interesting sight. We also saw the nebula in Orion's Sword and Angie pointed out four of Jupiter's moons for us. Jason used a long PCV pipe to stir up bioluminescence and blew through it as well to show more. It was a lovely clear sky and a nice walk home to our tents.