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Published: December 31st 2009
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Today is the day I’ve longed for since I planned to travel in Australia - diving at the Great Barrier Reef!
Based on the comments from Queenie, we’ve decided to join the diving tour with Silverswift. This particular tour takes visitors to three different reef sites, instead of the just one fixed point like most other tours. Depending on the current and condition of the day, the guide will pick three locations which will allow visitors to see the most of Great Barrier Reef.
So we arrived at the terminal at 7:30am sharp to pick up our boarding passes. Boarding started at 8am and as usual, divers and snorkelers are required to sign their lives away before the tour starts. We did an introductory dive tour, which was just a brief 30 minutes diving time. However, it took us about the same amount of time, if not more, for us to learn about the basics. The instructor told us all the scary stories about the dangerous species of marine lives, exploding lungs if not breathing properly, what to do if we run of out oxygen, etc. Thank God, none of these happened!! We were scheduled to dive at the first
site, but I got a bit sea sick as I was trying to get change when the boat was rocking the most. I have never been sea sick before, I could go on the pirate ships plus the spider ride that throws people upside down 10 times in a row and not feeling dizzy at all (well, 5 years ago).
Anyway, so after the boat stopped at Flynn Reef, an outer reef that is only 3.7km from the edge, and I felt better, we went snorkeling. The water was so blue. We could see the shades of the coral reef under the water. Snorkeling here is SO MUCH better than the bay at Honolulu; we corals of all sort of colors and shapes and of course lots of fishes in different sizes and colors, ugly and nice. This is exactly like what we saw in Planet Earth, it’s once again amazing to me how beautiful God creation is and really, how little we know about it. Seeing the fishes, I felt like I am watching Finding Nemo, except in real.
The second site is another point at Flynn reef. This site has a lot of dead corals at the
bottom, which attract fishes and also sea turtle (food!!). After putting on the diving gear and another short briefing, we are off to the water!!
The first move was a challenging one - with the super heavy oxygen tank and a stone belt on my body, I was asked to take a big step and basically drop into the water. Knowing how heavy the stuff was on my back, I thought I would sink to the bottom of the sea right away. The person who went before me took a step too small and knocked her oxygen tank against the deck, ouch! Glad that it didn’t explode. Once we’re under the water, we had to practice a few more techniques on clearing water out of mask, and changing regulators if air tank runs out. Finally, we are off the rope and floating on our own. As we are first time diver, we had to hold our arms together with the guide, even though there were only 4 people in a group, it was pretty difficult to move around. At first, I had to think about how to breathe through mouth and equalize ears. After a few meters down, I
got used to it and started to really look around. We saw and followed a sea turtle, some people even chased and touched the turtle, it was so cute. We also caught a glimpse of the Stingray on the way. Scuba diving allowed us to look closer in the coral, rather than just from the top, and saw lots of fishies hiding inside the coral and a lot of them were not easily visible due to their colors. We made it back to the surface after 30 minutes, didn’t blow our lungs!! I think overall, it was fun to try, but until I really get to dive in the deep water, I probably won’t see the true beauty of scuba diving.
The last point we stopped at is the Coral Garden. This location has a lot of gorgeous corals under the sea. Our last round of snorkeling was ended with a view of a juvenile (I believe) white tip shark and we happily returned to the boat.
On a side note, we bought a waterproof camera case from a sports store in Hong Kong purposely for Australia. Today was the first time using it. Even though it says
the case can be used up to 10m, we did not trust it for scuba diving. Doubtfully we took the camera with us to the snorkeling trips. It was scary at first, because not only we are risking the camera, we are also risking the pictures on the SD card that haven’t been backed up!! Thankfully, the camera came back on board fine. We were also able to take a few good pictures. HKD $200 for the case well spent.
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