We had a rainy night last night and it had continued on and off all day, with a stiff wind and solid grey skies for most of the time. the day was heavy and humid. Our wet gear wasn’t drying despite lots of wind.
We started the day cleaning up the puddles on the top of the fridge and on the floor from where the rain blew in the window overnight.
We had planned to visit ‘Oyster Stacks’ this morning while the tide was high (the best time) but when we arrived waves were crashing on to the rocks and it was very choppy, so we scrapped that quickly.
We decided to just travel a little further-to Turquoise Bay again, and see what it was looking like there.
There is an excellent painted frieze here exposing about the various sea creatures that can be seen while snorkelling. Very pretty and very informative.
We found the others there. They were enjoying themselves, and although the water really still was far from flat, we decided to give it a go too.
We both had issues with our snorkel masks. We just couldn’t seem to get them to not fog up. we saw some fish but didn’t last long.
We drove back up to Lakeside, and picked up a little signal on the way, confirming that dishwashing detergent might help with the fogging.
Sure enough, both the others had arrived at Lakeside. We pulled out the makings for lunch and found ourselves a table to sit at. Here we happily sat, eating out tuna on vita-weets and drinking a cup of tea while we watched the people coming and going,fording the shallow inlet from the beach around the corner snd 500m down to the south.
A pied oyster catcher came in and gave us a chance to check our bird ID and then another little bird (almost invisible as it scuttled across the sand) was seen. There also seemed to be a smaller one (even less east to see)
This prompted a trip back to the camper for binoculars and camera in an effort to get a better look and maybe get a name. In the end we decided it was probably a red capped plover.
With that puzzle solved we decided to grab our gear and head along this beach. Sure enough, the others were still there and there were reports of all kinds of delights so we tried the detergent trick ( it seemed to work) and headed out into the water. Although the water was not a millpond we actually both managed to have a good snorkel and see plenty of pretty fish before heading in rather tired. We have not invested in flippers ,so swimming against the current and getting where you need to is hard work. After the limited sleep of last night we were spent.
We did sight dolphins playing around in the water and also a turtle swimming by with its head out of the water.
We headed home to our campsite.
We stopped at the one tap in the park and put our heads under to try to wash out some of the salt, then sponged ourselves off as best we could. Our skin is still sticky with salt and the humidity and our hair is flat and stringy. Oh a shower would be wonderful.
We hung all our damp stuff out so it could not dry in the humidity and had a cuppa. Our neighbours reminded us to come up to the shelter for happy hour so we did. We sat looking out at a grey sea and threatening clouds all around and saw no sunset at all, but did hear all about how lovely and calm turquoise bay had been after we left. We even saw some footage taken by our neighbours.
After a dinner of fresh veggies with leftovers we moved our wet clothes to the cab of the camper and packed up our chairs just in case it actually managed to rain again and crawled into our damp camper and between the damp sheets.
Sure enough it rained again, ( huge drops pelting on on the roof only a couple of feet above our heads) but we were snuggled in under the shelter with the windows zipped up a bit better this time.
Luvapuzzle 