After leaving Sydney bright and early Wednesday morning a three hour flight took us to Tropical Northern Queensland and, more specifically, Cairns. From there a shuttle from where we were staying picked us up and drove us to Port Douglas.
The drive there was quiet but offered some amazing views. The area is all mountains so imagine driving through West Virginia (or any mountains, those are just the only ones I have experience driving through) except instead of have a mountain and cliffs on one side of you and a valley on the other there's the mountain and cliffs on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other. It was beautiful.
Once we arrived at our new hostel we grabbed a quick nap (since none of us had really slept much the night before) then explored our surroundings a bit. Port Douglas is a small, ocean-side little town (of roughly 4,000 people) but the owner of the hostel informed us that the population more than triples in the busy season (over 12,500 people). Big difference between summer and winter.
We had a quiet dinner at the hostel, confirmed timing for the next day, then settled in for the night - the next day would start early and was one we wanted to be well rested for.
Around 8 the next morning our friend Luke, who we know from uni and is originally from Port Douglas, picked us up and drove us to the marina. He works for the company that we were going diving with and was going out on the boat with us that day as one of the many lifeguards. We got there, picked up our tickets, and were ready to go!
The trip out to our first stop took a little over an hour and was quite rough - I was feeling a bit queasy when we got there. On the way a diving instructor walked us through the basics of diving including what all the equipment does, how to equalize, and how to communicate with one another under the water.
The two points that she stressed the most were to ensure that we equalized our ears every meter or so (just by making them 'pop' by swallowing or wiggling our jaws) so that the pressure wouldn't damage our ears or sinuses and that once we were in the water we should never stop breathing. This one she really stressed because when you're coming back to the surface of the water the air in your body expands because there is less pressure, meaning that if there is air you're holding in your lungs it would also expand and could cause injury. So watch your ears on the way down and your lungs on the way up.
Our lesson finished up and they gave us our diving times - we were up first! There were four people to an instructor and we were going with the same instructor at sites one and three. Not long after an announcement was made for us to head to the back of the boat and get prepped, it was almost time to dive!
We got all buckled up in our equipment and met our instructor, Simon, right as the boat stopped and maneuvered into place for our first stop. Once we were all set the four of us got up and followed Simon to the very back of the boat where you step off to dive and the first thing I noticed was how heavy the equipment was.
Before we actually headed off around the reef Simon walked us through a few exercises while we were hanging on to a rope attached to the boat still. He tested our ability to get water out of our masks, change between our main regulator (where you get your air) and the back-up one just in case it got knocked out of our mouths, and how to equalize our ears. Eric and I went through the tests first and had a few minutes to look around (all while still holding onto the rope to stay in place) while Simon was running through the tests with Leah and Jillian.
One of the craziest things to get used to was how close the fish got. We were only maybe a foot away from each other and the fish would swim right between us, not really caring that we were there. There was one big fish with visible teeth that was a bit intimidating at first but he didn't bother us at all, he was just hanging around because sometimes the instructors throw out pieces of fish so that more fish will gather around the divers. Simon did this once all four of us had run through the tests and were hanging onto the rope a few meters under the surface - he pulled his hand back quite fast after letting go of the fish though, didn't want to lose part of it to the hungry marine life he was feeding.
Once he was confident we were all ready he led us to the first area of the reef!
Since we were all introductory divers we weren't allowed to take cameras on our first dive. They don't want you to be paying too much attention to the camera and not enough to your instructor - more important to be safe. I do have one picture from that dive though, they have a professional photographer go around to the different groups and take pictures.
I'm on the left there, hidden by fish. The coolest part about this dive was that big brown fish you see in the front there though. He is so used to divers that we were allowed to pet him (yes, petting a fish feels strange) and the photographer was able to gently push him in front of us so that he could get pictures with him in it. Very sociable fish, it was sweet. Once our dive was over we changed gear and headed out to snorkel for the rest of the time at that stop.
As we journeyed to the next stop we got an underwater camera and prepared to get some pictures while snorkeling at location #2. After we stopped the four of us enjoyed a quick lunch (provided on the boat, it was quite good) then hopped back in to snorkel as much as we could!
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| Eric and I had been quoting Finding Nemo the entire trip so naturally I took a "She touched the butt!" picture :) |
It seemed like no time at all before the crew was calling us back to the boat to set off for our final stop and where we would do our second/final dive of the trip. We were able to take the camera on this dive and got some pretty cool pictures!
We had been told that it was likely we would see a shark on this dive but no such luck. We did see countless more interesting fish and coral and giant clams!
The entire thing was amazing, trying to describe the beauty of the reef is difficult. There are so many colors and textures to the coral (which is all ALIVE - crazy to think about) and the fish came in every shape and size and were regularly close enough to reach out and touch and giant clams really are giant. Everything about it was incredible and there were multiple points in time where I had to remind myself that it was real and I was actually scuba diving/snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef.
That night we met up with Luke again for dinner and to hang out in town for a bit and the next day it was time to head back to school!
It was quite an Easter Break and one I'll definitely always remember.
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