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Josh and I are now qualified open water scuba divers! We have a license to go 18 metres underwater, took us 4 days to get that bit of paper, and they were up there with the best days of our trip. The first 2 days were a little surreal, had to get up at 6.30 to get to school at 7.30, that was savage, and not what you expect to be doing on holiday... so all you back home having to do exams and revision... i felt a (very) little bit of your pain. The theory part basically involved learning what all the instruments did and how not to kill yourself while diving (the tutor, Mike's most commonly used phrase - in a dutch accent - was "don't do ______, or you will die"). Once all the theory and pool work was done we got to do the practical part of the qualification on the Great Barrier Reef over the last 2 days. It is an amazing place, all the colours and fish and other creatures down there are incredible, theres nothing else I've ever seen that I can really compare it to. Scuba diving was quite a strange experience in
itself, felt very odd breathing underwater, and it's not easy to remember all the things you have to keep doing to avoid exploding your lungs and getting the bends, but it got easier and more comfortable every dive we did. Definitely something I'll look into doing again now I've got the qualification, maybe even later this trip in Hawaii or California.
We did 4 dives in all on the reef, 2 on each day, and we saw loads and loads of different things down there, including sharks, rays, sea turtles (probably my favourite), and (obviously) thousands of different types of fish, such as the Napoleaon Maori Wrasse (a very big fish, a good metre and a half long, and up to a metre tall), Titan Trigger fish (who can bite holes in people and can't be killed even with a harpoon gun), clown fish (Finding Nemo) and loads more of all different colours, shapes and sizes, apart from the trigger fish, which got very irritated with one of the girls in the group, none of them were aggresive at all, they were happy to let us swim around them. Unfortunately we were only allowed a camera on the final
dive, where we didn't see as much as we did on other dives, so I can only show you guys a small selection of them.
The diving was probably one of the highlights so far, as well as the reef being awesome, it was also nice to have the opportunity to get to know a few people quite well, spending all day with the same people for 4 days on boats and in the class meant we saw loads of each other, we all had a great time doing it and went out in the evenings.
In summary, diving was brilliant, I'm loving Cairns, it'll be a shame when we have to go!!
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Mum
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Fish!
All those winter mornings walking to work at GBC and Sanofi made all this possible, good for you!! Think I'll have to get you a book on fish so you can identify what you saw! Another great entry. I can see that you'll be sad to leave Cairns and the warm weather behind. Love, Mumxxx