Last day at Lord Howe Island

Oh, it has gone so quickly.... and there's so much more to see and do.  We spent our last day walking down to the 'CBD' for the last time, and we had lunch at The Anchorage.  Then it was our last walk back to Lorhiti to wait in the 'transit lounge' for our lift to the airport.  Jess has the transit lounge well stocked with drinks and snacks for her guests, all on an honour system, and there is a shower and toilet available for use after you have checked out of your room.

We've been really happy with our accommodation and the cheerful, friendly service provided by Jess throughout our stay.  The gardens were beautiful, and the location was fantastic - I loved the fact that we could nip down to Ned's Beach from the back of the property, and that it was only a 10 minute walk to the CBD.   

Over 6 nights, I am very proud to say that we ate out every night - hey, I'm on holiday too!!!  Some of the restaurants were closed for winter, but we managed.  We ate once at Pandanus - lovely food, and the seafood salad in lime and chilli was excellent.  We ate twice at the Golf Club - we had to go back because the beef cheeks in Indian masala spices were divine!   We had many good coffees, several lunches (the chilli beef & chorizo pies and the Moroccan lamb shank soup were fantastic) and one dinner (yummy apple & rhubarb crumble) at The Anchorage.  And we had two meals at the Bowling Club - I previously mentioned the wonderful salt and pepper squid.  The meals were about the same price as you would pay on the mainland, they were of very good quality, and you got free transport there and back.  Can't complain about that.

Even though it was winter, the water at Lord Howe was still warm enough to swim or snorkel (though I'm from Canberra, so that might explain it).  The  coral and fish I saw while snorkelling was some of the best I have seen, particularly since it was only a 10 minute boatride out to the reefs.  And swimming with sharks and stingrays was an exciting bonus.

Because Lord Howe has a population of only around 350, with a cap on tourists of 400 at any one time, the island has a lovely, friendly, relaxed feel, where you constantly see familiar faces and stop to have a chat.  The locals are so proud of their beautiful home and are happy to share their stories with you and point out places to go.

During our time on the island we walked many kilometres over some challenging, rocky, but spectacular terrain.  We chose not to climb Mt Gower this time - we'll save that for our next trip, and we'll start training for it.  But we'll definitely be back.

Snorkelling at Ned's Beach

Second-last day at Lord Howe Island - it was a bit overcast in the morning, so we decided to go for a walk up to Top Shop and check out the goods for sale - if we were going to be cooking (which I wasn't planning to), we could have bought some lovely steaks or fish there.  We carried on up to Greenback Eatery (which was only open for dinner on Thursday, the day we were leaving), then down through Middle Beach Road and back on to Lagoon Beach Road.  We stopped at The Anchorage for our regular coffee, then headed back up the hill - which seems shorter and less steep each time we climb it!  Our fitness levels are definitely improving.

Time for lunch, then we grabbed our snorkelling gear and used our private pathway down to Ned's Beach to see how it compared to our previous snorkelling trip.  We hired wetsuits (all based on an honour system) from the shed then ventured into the water, which was around 22 degress.  We were again greeted by hundreds of fish - I've since discovered they were mullet, kingfish and silver drummers.  We got past them and out to the very close coral reef.  Again, there was a large variety of coral, heaps of fish including incredibly long garfish, parrotfish, wrasse, spangled emperors, and butterfly fish.  And all of this less than 100 metres from shore.  Just magic - I love this place!  We bumped into Jane and John, a couple we had done the snorkelling trip with, and they came up to have a look at Lorhiti Apartments - they were very impressed and said they would look at booking there next time they come to Lord Howe.

We'd booked into the Bowling Club for our final dinner at 6.30, so Jess took us down there again.  We had 'melt-in-your-mouth' salt and pepper squid for entree and it was delicious. I was tossing up whether to have fresh king prawns, but I ended up with a very good steak and Trev had a chicken parmigiana for mains.  We bought some tickets in the meat raffle, and we won a kilo of king prawns!  So it was a wise decision of mine to have a steak - looks like it's prawns for a late supper.  One of the chefs gave us a lift home from the club.  It's going to be hard to leave this place.