Saturday 13 September – Grant and Judith get their Padi

Rowan and I spent the morning drying out mattresses and bedding in the ferocious sunshine, while Grant and Judy went and completed their last two dives to get the diving certification. By midday we were in desperate need of cooling down so we went and snorkelled the reef nearby. It was a great snorkel, there were loads of fish, the biggest parrot fish we have seen in ages, and plenty of fish we have never seen before. There was a lot of interesting coral but a lot looked pretty damaged. The heat of the water was really unpleasant, every now and then we got pockets of cold water which was such a relief.

Grant and Judith were all done by mid afternoon, their instructor was a Japanese lady flown in to teach them and some guests next week. The Aussie owner’s husband’s an Austrian guy, usually instructs but he is away. The Aussie lady is recovering from two broken arms which she said was a long story, we never what happened there. The place is suffering terribly since Covid which is very sad. We all went in for supper, and were pleased to see a couple arrive to stay. We all had supper at one long table, turns out they are a very intrepid Swiss couple. They’ve just done an intense 5 day hike on the mainland in the highlands. They wanted to do some diving and looked for the most remote dive resort in PNG and came up with this place. We had very tasty mud crabs in a tomato sauce for supper, with little spinach parcels made from a veg I’ve seen in the market. Nasaki, the instructor joined us too, she is in her fifties and used to work here ten years ago, but still comes to help out when they need her. She lives in Cairns Australia now, what a character.