Today was a great day! It started early as most of the days have been here – 5:30am rise for breakfast. I slept on the beach last night on one of the three day beds. Woody and Tazzy (Head Chef/Woody’s new BFF) slept on the other two. It got so dewy that my blanket was drenched and made it a bit cold with the sea breeze, so I came up on to the lodge at 3am and slept on the couch on the porch. It was a much more comfortable sleep after that. When I was walking back from the beach in the dark, I could hear a bunch of ghost crabs scuffling along in the sand and the kangaroos pouncing on the bushes right beside the trail. It was pretty cool and slightly freaky.

Today, Candice, the awesome chicka that runs this place, let me decide what I wanted to complete today. More and more she’s been letting me plan the day for myself. It’s nice to have more responsibility. Kat (one of the three girls here – Tour Guide) and I unpacked more of the housekeeping sea container. We moved a bunch of items to the rooms now that the tents and canopies are up. We accomplished a lot. The sea container got up to 55 degrees today, so I could only stay in there for one minute at a time. We stopped working at 11am because the heat was too much (38 degrees). We sat around the lodge with the crew eating leftover lasagna from dinner last night, as well as wraps and freezies (or icy poles as the Aussies call them).

We’ve been going for guided snorkel trips the past three days after we finish working so the guides can get some training in and the rest of us can see the awesome places to tell guests about. We went to Turquoise Bay today which was my favourite snorkel ever! I saw two white tip reef sharks, swam with three big turtles (about 1 meter long was the biggest one), and a shovel nose ray. Kat dove down with me and snapped her fingers in front of a clam and it opened up. Woody pointed at a beautiful rainbow-coloured fish (not sure what kind it was) that is very territorial. When he clapped in front of it, the fish tried to attack his goggles. Woody explained that the female is in the reef and the male fish will attack anything that comes near regardless of the size. It was really cool! I'm spewing (Aussie term) that I forgot the GoPro, but I'm sure I'll do that snorkel several more times before the end of the season.

On the way home from the reef all of us were singing along to the song 'American Pie' in the van. It was quite comical hearing all the different accents in harmony (South African, French, Australian, Canadian). We’ve got a great bunch of weirdos here from all over the world.

I had a nice, cold shower when we got back. I stayed in for longer than my two-minute allowance and nearly ran out of water. There’s only 90 litres a day for all of us to shower. We have to turn the water off while we lather up, but I left it on to spoil myself. Hehe!

I’m sitting in the lodge right now relaxing. Everyone is having some beer and lounging before dinner. We get unlimited beer after work each night WOO HOOOO! It’s cooling down finally. The minute we finish work I put my bathing suit on and go for a swim in the reef and spend the rest of the day in my suit until bed. Not a bad way to spend my days, I’d say! Woody just got back from a bird-watching hike so I’m going to go join him for some frothies (beer) and help the chef make some salad to go along with the meal. Hope the day is just as great tomorrow!