Ethan Dylan Siegel's Website

Welcome to Ethan Siegel's Website

They say life is a series of tests. This is not one of them.

The view from our room at Hayman. The pool was gigantic -- we'd guess about an acre! The center pool was fresh water, surrounded by a second salt water pool.

This is Langford Reef, where we got dropped off for the day. At high tide, it was no more than 12 feet wide. They left us with some emergency supplies in the red canister on the beach. It being the 21st century, the coconut radio from Gilligan's Island had been replaced by a plain old cell phone.

The water was crystal clear.

As the tide went out, the coral we were snorkeling over was right at the surface and we were able to take shots of the coral and the brilliantly colored clams.

The rest of the underwater photos are from Blue Pearl Bay. Here are a few different types of parrot fish. You can hear them chomping on the coral under the water.

This clam was about three feet long and bright green, although it was too deep for the color to come out well.

In the right light, all of the parrot fish were this colorful.

Brother can you spare a dime?

The fish were everywhere when we returned to the marina from Blue Pearl Bay.

A parrot fish doing his fair share of keeping the marina clean.

The smaller wrasse -- about four feet long.

Check out the lips on this guy.

You can make out a sucker fish stuck upside down to the bottom of this one.

Playing Dizzy Izzy on the beach.

June 4. Greetings from Sydney! Before we catch up, let me just say that we rented "From Hell" tonight and it was so incredibly awful. Do yourselves a favor and NEVER see this movie. Really. Now, back to Australia. We've been here a few days after leaving the Great Barrier Reef on Friday. We spent our last week on the reef at Hayman Island, which turned out to be the nicest resort we've ever visited. Hayman Island is in the northern Whitsunday Islands, at the southern portion of the Great Barrier Reef. We did a lot of snorkeling, got dropped off at a few remote beaches, and took a trip to Whitehaven Beach, which is reportedly one of the nicest in the world. The sand there is a near perfect white and almost pure, very fine silica. We spent quite a bit of time on Hayman recharging ourselves and lounging by the pool, too. The resort had quite a few boats and we took advantage of them. We got dropped off one day at Langford Reef, which is a secluded sand spit about ten minutes from Hayman Island. The snorkeling there was great, and the resort packed us a picnic lunch to enjoy on the beach. Later in the week, we got dropped off at Blue Pearl Bay, which was on the other side of Hayman Island, but only reachable by boat. We snorkeled there for hours and the marine life was almost as abundant and colorful as we saw on the outer reef. We encountered a few GIANT wrasses, which are huge fish as long as Lane and quite a bit wider. Overall, we had an incredible time at the Great Barrier Reef and were a little sad to leave. We were at Dunk Island, Port Douglas, Cairns and Hayman Island for three weeks and it did not rain for a single minute. We've caught the diving bug, big time, and are looking forward to more diving in Thailand in July and August. Before that, though, we have decided to add a week in Australia and go to the Outback. We're flying to Alice Springs in a week and then to Bangkok on June 17th. We hope everyone is doing well!

We'll be in Sydney for another week before heading off to the Outback. We can promise some good photos of the Opera House and Harbor Bridge next time. Miss you all and be well!

Nicer birds on the balcony DOES NOT translate into nicer bird shit.