Pat and Jason and I went for an early morning snorkel in time to be back for the showers which turned off at 10 AM. This was perhaps our best snorkel of all-gorgeous clear water with lots of fish to watch. In many ways these are my favorite things to see. We also saw a few granddaddy-sized fish along with all the others. Truly lovely. We packed up our tents and bags and at noon we went to the marine observatory where you could walk down stairs to an underwater viewing area. There we saw several bat fish and some others as well. It was cool to be able to talk so freely while looking at fish. There were also enormous schools of herring and other smallish silver fish. Pat and I decided to hurry back in order to snorkel in this new place with these large schools. It was interesting to snorkel with sandals instead of fins-much, much less efficient. It was astounding to be under there with literally thousands of fish who would all change direction at the same time, often based on my movements. The batfish were surprisingly not shy, and let me get quite close to them.

At two o'clock we boarded our ship, stopping for an hour or so at Long Island-home of Club Crocodile-island tourism at perhaps its pinnacle. We were very glad for Hook Island "Resort" at that point-much more our style. The ride back was beautiful-seeing the islands up close among the blue, blue water. Jason's hat hopped off his head into the water when it encountered a cross-breeze.

Once back at Airlie Beach we did a number of errands and headed out to the dive shop where we signed papers and then boarded our ship. We decided to all take the PADI Advanced Open Water class which meant extra skills. The ship caused virtually no seasickness which was lovely.