Great Barrier Reef

Australia is so big! We headed up to Cairns for a few days, on the northern coast (said like “cans”). We went on a catamaran out to the Great Barrier Reef. It was a cool boat, with only 50 guests on it and a very personable staff. It took us over an hour to boat out to our first spot, Paradise Reef. It was hot, but overcast. They had us all wear sun/stinger suits to protect us from little stinger fish in the water (see funny blue costumes below).

Rainer and I signed up for a 10 minute free SCUBA try and neither of us has ever done it. We sat on the prep bench, strapped into the fins, mask, oxygen tank, weight belt, backpack with gadgets, regulator and other important tubes and straps… and then had to stand up. That stuff is so heavy! We waddled down the stairs and I realized I was first at the same time the guy was yelling, “ok, jump in”. We jumped in to surprisingly cold and rough water and grabbed onto a rope tied between the ends of the boat. A guide was rushing us down the line, ‘testing’ our skills we had learned in the speedy 5 minute lesson on desk of taking off our regulator under water, getting water out of our masks, and regulating the pressure in our ears. After two minutes of waves crashing over our head, Rainer and I decided we had enough of the crash course in SCUBA diving. It was a cool experience for sure, but possibly it’s not for us.

So we snorkeled the reef, and it was awesome. We saw huge fish with rainbow colors, fat grey fish that hung out on the bottom of the ocean, really thin black fish with yellow around their circle shaped bodies, bright blue fish and even little nemos! The coral was just as amazing and beautiful. There were so many different shapes and colors. Some were shaped like flowers but really hard looking. Others were bright blue. And some really cool coral waved with the ocean movement. We even saw 50 year old massive clams on the bottom, and a guy in our group swam down and touched the inside of them, and they snapped at him. We also saw a stingray! We ended up snorkeling at two places, the second was outside a small bird sanctuary island. It was a great day!