Day 30 - 11/01/22 - Conflict Islands, Papua New Guinea - Day 2

 After sailing in the Coral Sea overnight, the Westerdam was early to it's hovering place.  Today the ship's starboard side faced the island.  As is our custom, we didn't get up early.  We leisurely ate breakfast and talked out our day's plans. We ate with new friends, Gary and Linda, whom we sailed with on the Nieuw Statendam back in August.  

With our gear all packed we headed to BBKing lounge and we're told to just go down one floor to the exit to the tenders.  It's a fast tender ride at a slow speed, but our tender driver had a hard time getting close to the dock.  It took a couple of tries.  Soon we got to walk like drunken sailors down the long floating pier.  We obtained some water and soon headed out to find the International Airport.  It was a short walk through the jungle along nicely manicured paths.  We passed the turtle sanctuary where there are turtles about ready to hatch.  There are also some nice bungalows that can be rented and I'm pretty sure they are not cheap.  

Soon we reached the Terminal of the International Airport and its 2,100 foot runway.  We took a lot of pictures at the runway and the terminal building.  We then walked the entire length of the runway down the center and completed a loop walking back to our meeting point for our shore excursion to the snorkeling platform.  When our turn came for our 11:15am checkin, we signed the waiver, had our ticket scanned, and shortly we were loaded into small outboard powered open boats and taken out to the platform.  There was supposed to be a guide showing us around, but he was nowhere to be found.  But since we had already snorkeled the abyss, we headed out on our own.  There was a comparable amount of small fish like we saw at the nearby abyss location we snorkeled at yesterday.  While it was pretty, it once again didn't live up to the hype as being the best snorkeling in the world.  We had an hour there and I snorkeled to each end of the allotted area.  At the platform there were some significant currents, but none that I couldn't snorkel against and make headway.  At the end of the hour, the same small boat delivered us back to the starting point.  We elected to eat the sandwich we had packed and I ordered a meat pie and a couple of zeros.  It was yummy and saved us from returning to the ship for lunch.

After lunch we headed out to snorkel the north side of the floating pier.  It was clearly the best of the 4 locations we snorkeled at.  There were giant clam shells, a starfish, and lots of fish at the abyss including some much larger ones.  We snorkeled the abyss north for a ways before turning around and snorkeling the abyss back to near the floating pier where we turned left to snorkel back to where our gear was stored.

Once out of the water, we found a fresh water shower and tried to rinse most of the sand off of us.  We caught a 3pm tender and returned to the Westerdam where we showered an washed out our swimming clothes.  Once they dry, we'll send them out for the ship's laundry service to wash them.  

As was the case yesterday, I spent the time after showering reviewing my camera footage and selecting stills from the afternoon's snorkeling trip.  

In his departure message, the Captain indicated that the Covid count today was 47 passengers and 5 crew.  The Captain called that level. He also  indicated that the female cadet officer would be taking the ship out to sea plus for practice (just because he said), she would rotate the ship 360º before sailing out of the hovering spot.  That's got to be a big thrill as a cadet to be in control of a nearly 100 ton ship. She did the 360º rotation counter clock wise and we soon were on our way out to the Coral Sea.

We had dinner with Erik and Marilyn before attending the 7pm performance by Thomas Armstrong-Robley who did Timeless: Classic Rock Restrospective.  It was well done.  Since I had two days blogs to catch up on, we adjourned to the room and I spent the next 3 hours updating my blog and online threads since tomorrow's sea day is going to be filled with 4 lectures. I also booked us on a crocodile and Port Douglas trip for our day in Cairns.  We got the last two remaining spots.

After all of the sun and snorkeling, a good sea day seems like a welcome option.