25 November 2011
It might be absolutely beautiful here and a paradise for our nature loving kids but the toilet still needs seeing to!
The kids and I spent the morning on school work whilst Mark cooked the fresh meat before it starts to go off. He's now made a few meals for our trip which will make it easier for us when we are underway.
At low tide we went back over to the reef, this time exploring the outer edge, where the ocean meets the reef. It feels incredible to be standing on the very edge of the reef (which took us about 30 minutes to walk across) with the waves crashing and then just stopping there in front of you. At the edge of the reef are deep crevices, a couple of metres wide with sea carved shapes cut into the rock. Mia finds a perfect ring - the Minerva toilet, and takes the opportunity to have a wee - timing her evacuation, so that the next wave in gives her a nice wash as it flushes through!
Then it's back to the inner reef for the kids to have a snorkel in the calm shallow, warm waters - even so, it's getting decidedly chillier, the further South we head - even Mia has taken to wearing clothes at times. Mia finds a perfect sea urchin skeleton and they both see a lion fish. Later Lochy tells me that he's glad it didn't bite him as it's highly venomous, according to his SAS survival guide. He's inspired enough to draw it in his school book and write a few lines about it.
There are now 6 boats in the lagoon - all the others are German speaking, which makes it much more difficult to eavesdrop on the radio chat about the weather! But amongst the chat comes 'nein vind' which I think means no wind so we'll probably wait until tomorrow afternoon or even Sunday before leaving.
And talking of toilets, Mark has finally found the cause of the mystery of the non-flushing toilet - and fixed it, giving him great jobbie satisfaction.