Paradiso

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Days 144 - 151

After a long bus journey followed by an early morning boat, we landed on a gorgeous white beach with clear blue sea lapping up onto the shore. We were at Coral Bay in the Perhentian Islands. We walked along the beach looking for somewhere to stay and checked into a bargainous beach hut a stones throw away from the beach. We got ourselves sorted and planted ourselves on the beach under the clear blue sky. The sea was so still and clear, it was literally like a luke warm bath, with lots of little fish swimming around and attacking Stuart's moldy old feet. This pretty much set the scene for the rest of our days on the Perhentian islands.

A couple of days in, we went on a brilliant snorkelling trip. It was just us and two girls. First stop was Shark Point. We jumped into the water in search of sharks and then there it was. Swimming directly beneath us was a black tip shark. It was about 1.5 m long and was just cruising along. Stuart was then kicking about in hot persuit of it with the camera. It was so cool. Next stop was Turtle point. As soon as we arrived we saw a massive turtle and followed it for a while. When it came to the surface for air, Carly touched it's shell and leg very lightly. They are so placid they just aren't bothered by humans at all. We had a final stop before lunch which was in a small bay and our guide told us there was nothing down there but fish. He wasn't wrong! As soon as you jumped in, all you could see was a wall of fish. It was incredible - they were everywhere swimming right up to you and nipping you. they were so colourful, it was great. We also saw this massive fish with a funny hump on it's head which was bigger than the shark. It was huge.

We had lunch and stopped at a couple more places where we saw some nemos and a couple of sting rays, which was pretty cool. Again, our underwater camera hasn't been developed yet, but we'll add pics as soon as it has. If you look back at the Great Barrier Reef entry in Cairns, we've put up some of the pics now.

We left Coral Beach for a couple of days to go to the very top of the island to a deserted beach. There were huge monitor lizards wandering about right outside our room- they were about 2m in length and looked like dinosaurs. We hired snorkels one day which was cool, but it was too quiet there so we went back to Coral Bay for the last couple of days.

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Photos

Eddie Liz-ard
Eddie was our little mate, he used to come and say hello every night.

Comments

[Colin]

Of course, if you were still in Australia, Eddie would be the Wonderful Lizard of Oz. Glad you're still having fun.