Scuba diving IS fun!

Carl and I spent the day on the Great Barrier Reef doing some introductory scuba dives - GREAT fun! Much better than I expected, actually. We took a shuttle early this morning about an hour north to Port Douglas, and then caught a sizable boat out to the "outer reef", which is supposed to be one of the better (untouched) regions. Neither he nor I had ever done this before, so we went for the heavily shepherded "introductory dives", in which we went down with 1-2 other newbies and 1 instructor, never more than 12m deep. The instructor helped us with our boyancy and monitored our air levels, so we just had to deal with mobility, steady breathing, ear clearing and if necessary mask clearing. Quite manageable, and very cool. I had some very close encounters with a Malabar (?) cod - about 3-4 feet long and fairly big. He came within a foot of my face and stared at me, I think looking for food, because when I held up empty hands, he swooshed off. We also saw some very colorful coral, a pineapple sea cucumber (huge! and aptly named), the Nemo clownfish, and many other amazingly bright creatures that I didn't catch the name of. It was a pretty fantastic day though - a bit windy and therefore cold above deck, but otherwise ok, and the diving was really fantastic! We took an underwater camera down - hopefully some pictures will turn out.

We're still plotting what to do with our last two days Down Under - hopefully some climbing. And then it's off to home soil!

written by

GoBlue on August 6, 2007 from Cairns, Australia

from the travel blog: Joc's Journeys

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