02.26.10
The largest living organism on earth
Warning: Photos ahead!
With a semi decent wake up call of 7am, we head off for our next adventure – the Great Barrier Reef. We jump on the Osprey V and are on our way out to Saxon Reef. After some safety briefings for snorkeling, scuba, and just being on a boat we drop anchor and are set loose!
It’s stinger season (think box jellyfish that is fatal if it stings) and even though we probably didn’t need them, we opted to get stinger suits just in case. We figured the boys (and our parents) would approve even though we looked quite silly our sexy onesies.
I decided to give scuba a try, whereas Jessica was all about the snorkeling so we split up for most of the day. Jess jumped in and was off in an instant. I had just a few minutes until my scuba run so i joined her for just a few minutes while we sorted out snorkeling masks (hers was leaking). My group was called so I went in to get suited up.
This was my first time ever doing scuba so it was a bit exciting to be doing it at the GBR. In groups of 4 we get in the water and do a few tests to make sure we don’t freak out underwater. One guy ended up having issues so it ended up justing being 3 students and 1 guide for the first dive. We all swam around arm in arm as Marcus (our guide who looked quite a bit like Steve Irwin) took us around to check things out. It was pretty awesome to get down lower in the water and even better to have him pointing out things to touch or not to touch. (that’s me above – yep just my nose and regulator)
We found some aneomes and little Nemos! I touched the anemones (per Marcus’s instruction) and they were kind of sticky… We wander over to another area where there were huge clam shells. Marcus points to it and gestures to the guy next to me to put his hand inside it. The guy was like ughhh ok, but then had 2nd thoughts a few times… it was funny to watch. Marcus ends up showing us, the clam closed up but then we could feel its shell near the edges. very smooth on the inside! (Jessica saw these too as well as the nemos but she didn’t touch since we were all lectured about not touching things and of course followed the rules!)
With my dive over, i join back up with Jessica and we snorkel some more and have lunch. We’ve decided that we’re not insane fans of Aussie BBQ lunches – so far they are just ok but luckily they are usually included so at least we’re not paying big bucks for them.
We travel on to our next location of North Hastings Reef. Here i decided to do another dive. Things went a bit smoother on this one and folks had the option of swimming on their own. I brought the good camera on this one and i think it made me want to float which was an issue sometimes. So Marcus woudl grab me, pull me down and I ended up just hanging on to him half the time (ok most of the time). I’m not sure i liked the out of control feeling but i’m sure if i were more into it i’d figure it out. On the brightside since i was always next to him i got to see some cool stuff since he was leading and would point out cool things again. we even saw a little shark. (and I petted wally the resident huge fish)
White I was diving Jess was off enjoying the new reef. It was a much better reef for snorkeling and she saw a lot of really cool stuff. Parrot fishing eating the coral (and even hearing them doing it), the great clams, and just lots of cool pretty fishes. As I was coming out from the dive, she opted to hop on the semi-sub ride with Elvis our resident marine biologist (and supposed entertainer), so i went out on my own for some snorkeling as well. Just as she’d explained to me it was really awesome – almost better than the scuba in that location.
We both filled our memory cards and took way too many pics, so the last part of our day was just spent enjoying the fishes and the great barrier reef.
We opted for a helicopter ride back to Cairns so we could see the reef from the air, and what a great plan that was! It’s hard to get a good perspective just from a boat and getting up was the perfect way to end the day. We shared our Heli with some other gals from the states (who also happened to be singing “i’m on a boat!”).
The weather had been cloudy and occasionally rainy throughout the day, but had cleared up while we were at North Hastings. Our ride back to town started out clear but as we got closer to town it got cloudier and then it started to rain. Was kind of cool actually to see all the rain clouds over the mountains and then break free of them to land in sunny condidtions.
We were so very tired that we opted to take an afternoon nap which ended up being 4 hours… we were still very tired and ended up just getting pizza from the hotel since we had a 4am wake up call for the next day. Another great day down under 