April 5 - Brook - Today we said good-bye to our second home stay hosts. Then we started to make our way to Cook's beach with a variety of people. Brenda, Vivian, Becca & Myself all arrived around 1:00pm. The beach was too enticing for us to ignore so off we went exploring. We enjoyed ourselves so much that we just kept walking. The sand beneath our feet and the warmish water was all too inviting. Soon we found ourselves at the end of the beach. We decided to follow the estuary at the end of the beach up towards a footbridge and then to a trail network that went to the next beach. Once on the trail we just kept walking. Up and up we went to a place called Shakespear's lookout. Hear we read the information displays on how Captin Cook came to area in 1769 to observe to passage of Mercury as it traveled across the face of the sun. In honour of this moment in time Captin Cook gave the area it's name, Mercury Bay. On the way home we we sidetracked and followed another trail that ended up in Lonely Bay. Lonely Bay is an isolated little bay only accessible by boat or trail. The bay is named this because it is defined by two large outcrops of cliffs/headlands on either end of the beach. I really wasn't that interested to go see a small little beach at this point but the others were so off we went. When we arrived I was amazed to see how many seashells collect here. I was so enthralled by this and decided to collect a bag of them to try and take home to my children. I also spent a bunch of time taking creative pictures of the shells and beach. I became very engrossed in collecting and picture taking that I forgot to pay attention to the rising tide and waves. All of a sudden Brenda and I were knee deep in a rather large wave. That was the end of shell collecting at Lonely Bay. Off we set again for home. Once back to the estuary we decided we could save time by crossing the water instead of hiking the trail back to the bridge. It was a rather wet crossing as the tide had come up significantly since we started and of course the water is always deeper than it looks. Vivian stayed dry, she hiked back to the bridge. Once back to Cook's beach quickly met up with Katie who had just arrived and went for another little walk to see a bit of the town and check out the general store. After this we all went our separate ways and settled in for the evening with our new host families.