11/19

Lady Elliot Island is a natural island formed by coral and bird droppings.  It really is.  The lodgings are glorified tents.  The reason you want to stay a week here is that the island is in the Great Barrier reef and you simply walk off the island into reef and amazing coral vistas.  We spent days snorkeling here.

  

 

We only had a disposable underwater film camera so our pictures are not as good as we would have liked and we missed a lot of great shots.  We saw so many different kinds of seafaring creatures: sharks, turtles, anemone, cuttlefish, manta ray, and a huge maori wrasse (biggest damn fish I have ever seen).

While we were there, the Green sea turtles were nesting, so we could go out at night with the nature guide and watch the turtles dig a pit and lay eggs before heading back to sea.

We left Lady Elliot and headed to Sydney to finish out the Australia leg of our trip.  Our second day in Sydney we went to the Opera house for Rachmaninoff after a visit to the botanic gardens.

The following day we saw the aquarium and wildlife world.  We got a lot more pictures at the aquarium but it feels like cheating after seeing some of these animals in the wild.

The Sydney Harbor bridge was very cool.  We climbed the pylon before taking the Parramatta ferry.  Of course, the most interesting pictures you can take from the bridge are the opera house.

 

We took the train to Katoomba and the Blue Mountains.  There we saw echo point, three sisters and the leura cascades.

 

The next day we flew to New Zealand.