Robinson Crusoe meets Dirty Dancing
- wildlife australia
That island was as wide as a landing strip for a small (12 seats) plane is long. Look up Lady Elliott Island on google maps. It was surrounded by coral reef, so you could walk off the beach into the water and start snorkeling and see all these colorful fishies, sea turtles, and sharks. I didn’t see any manta rays while I was in the water, only on my flight back did I see one, as well as humpback whales with babies later.
On the island was a small resort with different kinds of accommodation from “eco cabins”, which were better tents, to more luxurious ensuite rooms. Dinner and breakfast as well as one boat tour, island exploration tours, and snorkel equipment were included.
Snorkeling was great, but after a day of doing nothing but snorkeling and reading chick lit my brain craved intelligent conversation. So I visited the power generation plant of the island and ran into the island engineer who gave me a private tour, and I asked him many questions. Apparently, all the batteries used for power storage from the photovoltaic panels were made in Germany :) Do you know what a gel battery is? Well, I didn’t, and it sounded fancy enough to be new technology, but all it is is the good old lead acid battery, only that the acid is gelated. Probably for safety reasons.
Anyway, that guy was very nice, and I kept running into him later (tiny island…) and we chatted for a bit. I was wondering if the resort staff was allowed to hang out with guests, and if they would take me to their staff accommodations so that we could drink beers and have parties and bonfires at the beach. Dirty Dancing, isn’t it?
That of course never happened, I went to bed at 9 pm, being shattered after all the relaxing. Only on my last day a woman my age, and also on her own, arrived on the island, which was a nice change since there were only families or couples among the (maybe 30?) guests. But I hadn’t expected anything else, and I got to eat and sleep well, and read a lot.
After all this excitement I’m now on my way to a Buddhist retreat. I took a shuttle from the hostel, I’m now sitting in the bus to the train, and will take the fast tilt train, then a slow train, and finish with a 6 km walk to my final destination. And train travel in Australia is another topic that deserves its own ranty post.
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