Glass-Bottom Boat to Japanese Garden

The boat is a 1990s fibreglass hull with a glass panel in the floor and a canvas roof, and it does exactly one thing well: it puts the reef under people who do not want to put their face in the water. We motor twenty minutes south from the marina, cut the engine over the Japanese Garden, and drift while soft corals, sergeant majors and the occasional hawksbill turtle move around underneath you. We also swing past the C-130 Hercules that was sunk here in 2017 - on a clear morning you can make out the tail from the surface. We drop anchor once for anyone who does want to get in with a mask. Honest bit: the glass is scratched. It is a working boat and thirty years of sand and shoes have frosted it, so what you get is a good look at the reef, not an aquarium window. Colours also flatten badly after 11am when the sun goes straight overhead, which is why we run the 9am departure and only add an afternoon one when the bookings force it. If you can swim, snorkelling will always beat this.