Today was my last full day in Port Douglas. I was going to miss this warm climate and this nice apartment. As I ate the last of my two egg omelets on the patio overlooking the pool I thought to myself I had better make this day last. Just then a bird landed on our railing just a few feet from my plate. I had my bird book in front of me. I asked it what page he was on. This one turned out to be a fan tailed cuckoo. He turned both ways so I could get a good look at him before he flew off. We were due to take the Poseidon boat today. They picked us up at our hotel and took us to the marina. The journey to the outer reef took an hour and a half in our fast boat. We were way out there on the horizon. We couldn't see land anymore. And we were close to the continental shelf were the water gets really deep really fast. Out here there is soft coral and hard coral. Hard coral, most commonly in the form of stag horn coral, is delicate and breaks off easily in high waves. Soft coral is more durable to damage from the wind and waves because it moves with the current. We had three hours to enjoy snorkeling. When I got in I saw a white tipped reef shark right away so I followed it. Some of the people on the boat were diving. The reef shark saw some divers so it turned around. I turned around too. After five minutes the reef shark saw more divers. This time it turned out to the deep blue sea. I didn't follow it out there. I've never snorkeled above divers before. The bubbles they form are really loud. As the bubbles rise the large bubbles divide into smaller bubbles. I floated in the path of some bubbles and let them hit my face. I could feel and hear the soft pattern of bubbles breaking on my skin. One fish I saw had a hugely prominent nose. I don't know if there is a Pinocchio fish but that would have been a good name for it. I saw a male and some female parrot fish. The parrot fish have big front teeth like donkeys. Even though the parrot fish are 20 feet below me, when they swim toward me with those big choppers I feel intimidated. The parrot fish have a second pair of teeth back farther in their mouth to help grind up all the hard coral they eat into sand. I heard a parrot fish can eliminate 200 pounds of sand per year. When they want to rest at night they form a mucous in their stomach and start spitting it out of their mouths until their entire body is surrounded by mucous. This mucous prevents predators such as sharks from detecting their heartbeat or their smell. We moved snorkeling areas three times. Our final snorkel was at a place called Castle Rock. A round coral castle grew up from the ocean floor. I really liked this place. I slowly swam around the perimeter three times. Each trip around took five or ten minutes. When I got back to the place where the blue fish with the yellow tails hung out I knew I had come full circle. Then I decided to swim on top of the castle but near the edge. That was beautiful too. I went around twice. The coral has deep crevices in some places and some pretty big fish were hiding out in there. The coral was so close to the top of the water it would have been impossible to swim upright. I had to lay flat or risk touching it. I did not want to touch the coral. For one thing the Great Barrier Reef is 100% awesome and I didn't want to ruin it at all. And another reason for not touching it is that some if it is hard and could scratch you. Bacteria thrive in this hot water and any cut would get infected. Snorkeling the great barrier reef was magnificent and everything I had hoped it would be. When they blew the whistle we had to swim to the boat and turn in our stinger suits, fins, masks and snorkels. We had lunch on board and it was delicious. As we motored back to Port Douglas I sat on top with my legs dangling over the side of the boat enjoying the sea spray. I saw land come into view. I hated to be done with snorkeling on this vacation. At the dock we saw our friend who did not go snorkeling with us. She planned a river cruise for the afternoon. She told us to walk on the other side of our apartment building and look at the fruit bats. She had scouted them out earlier in the day. We stopped at the apartment to grab out cameras. We could not believe it. There were tens of thousands of fruit bats hanging upside down in trees right next to our place. I watched them with my binoculars trying to catch one in the act of flying, landing, and swinging upside down. I wanted to know if they were graceful in this or awkward. I stared and stared through my binoculars until I couldn't look anymore. I never caught one in the act of landing. We were standing in the road across from some people's yards. Kids were playing in the front yard. I can't imagine living next to this many fruit bats. We had heard about a boy from Cairns who died last week from a disease he contracted from handling a fruit bat. One tour guide said the boy died from rabies but they're using a different name for the illness so as not to scare off tourists. Some people are advocating eradicating the fruit bats. Others know the importance of the fruit bat in this tropical ecosystem. Why are there so many huge flocks of birds here? Besides the fruit bats I also saw huge flocks of red collared lorikeets and metallic starlings. I can't imagine doing the Christmas bird count in this town. Since this was our last night together we decided to finish off our leftovers. I had showered and packed and we had finished dinner when a big thunderstorm hit. Thunder here lasts long and is very loud. Suddenly the lights went out. Electricity was out of commission for half of Port Douglas. We were glad we decided to eat in tonight because we not only would have gotten wet but we might not have been able to find out way home in the dark. Some times we accidentally walked past our apartment in the day light. My friend had a flashlight with her so we sat in the dark and reviewed our marvelous trip to Australia. After 45 minutes someone knocked on the door. The caretaker brought us some tea candles. She didn't have any matches to spare so she lit 3 of the candles and gave us 3 more candles to use when these went out. Now we had candles. Naturally it was time to tell spooky stories. None of our stories was very spooky so we started making shadow puppets on the wall. Kangaroos are easy to guess but no one guessed my wombat shadow. One friend started falling asleep. To engage her and keep her awake I did a shadow puppet of a horse galloping. I don't think her eyes were open and she soon went to bed. We all turned in early. I left my candle sitting in a saucer on the floor of the hallway. Three minutes after I went to bed all the lights came on. We had a lot of lights on when the electricity went out. This struck me as funny and I giggled as I moved through the apartment turning off all the lights. Tomorrow would be an early and long day for me. Much as I hated to admit it, the Port Douglas chapter of our trip was now over.
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