Day 62 - Thurs 1st August finally - PADI Final exam

This morning dawned cloudy, with brief sun. (This may be how the blog posts start from now on ;). It rained ALL night and the frogs did not let up for most of it. There is also some animal that makes the most fantastically exotic chirrup, as this also occurs in the middle of the night I'd be hesitant to say it was a bird but who knows? Certainly no one here, they are terrible at the island ecology. It sounded like I imagine a Kookoburra sounds. Maybe lizards or the gekkos?

Breakfast at 7-8am, usually fried rice or noodles. I was hoping to get in the water, but no luck. Book work and the final part of the PADI video. Then a brief presentation on local aquatic life by an American girl, Maren, who described each and every fish, individually, as 'cool'. Good to see what we might see. 

The teams are currently divided into Seahorse ID and Reef Survey teams and go out twice a day each, on sunny days. They came back today reporting a male (pregnant) and female had been spotted together. These are the first seen for a while. 

After lunch, Kim, the diving instructor finally got her act together (she is called 'crazy Kim' and suffers from nitrogen narcosis at 20m - meaning she starts behaving drunkenly and has to surface) to test us on our 'book work'. All ok. We wandered vaguely on our own initiative into the 'final exam' and handed it in. Then Abby, Laure and I went for a swim in the rain in our clothes. Very nice but I had forgotten how much I hate waves! Everything was damp all day. Walking along the path to the beach in bare feet beside the jungle was wonderful however. Very 'Tarzan'! While swimming I saw a black and white bird pair, like large magpies. They made a loud sound similar to that Kookoburra noise I heard last night I think. Hmmm.( Later: pretty firm ID as Great Indian Hornbills - weren't expecting that, eh?). Everything looks stark and dramatic, the rounded rocks on the yellow sand of the beach are the only softness. There is 'red gum' here I think, with red bark that is sort of luminous, dark in the rain. Loads of brown dragonflies too on the offshore (? Into the land) breeze, near our bungalow.