Yesterday was Mardi Gras. One of the residents made himself the Mardi Gras king.

Today is Valentine’s day as well as Ash Wednesday. If you are in the Australian tourist industry, this is the low season. We visited Exmouth, a very small town of about 1,000 people during the low season, 20,000 in the high season. Their harbor has a lot of very big boats. I think there might be more boats than people this time of year. We took an excursion on a glass bottom boat. Exmouth’s reef is the world’s second largest (behind the great barrier reef) and the world’s largest fringing reef. It is also the world’s healthiest reef of any kind, thanks to generally low ocean temperatures. We saw a lot of sea life — a large oyster, a sea turtle, a sea snake, two sharks, a ray, and of course a lot of fish. The pictures turned out to be quite poor, but here’s one “we were there” shot.

I haven’t written about our evening entertainment. The shows are usually good. There’s a ship’s backup band when needed to support a soloist. They are quite good and very professional. Usually they play John Denver or Broadway or some other simple music. Recently we had a soloist sax player. This guy is remarkable because he likes very complex Latin rhythms. It seemed to me the backup band perked up and had a lot of fun with this. Especially remarkable is the drummer. He’s from Argentina. He was never early, never late, never missed a lick. And he was obviously enjoying himself immensely. So was I.

Tomorrow is another sea day. I hope this finds everybody doing well.