The Reef (a little delayed...)

G'day all.

We haven't written on here for an indecent amount of time, so I thought now that we have been in New Zealand for a while was a perfect time to write about our trip to the Great Barrier Reef. We spent a day on a boat called Passions of Paradise (or somehting similar) and had a FANTASTIC day.

The boat left early in the morning and took us out to Michaelmas Cay, a bird sanctuary on the reef, where literally thousands of birds nest. It was so loud and the entire little sandy island was completely covered with birds, so we shuffled onto the tiny little area of sand not covered with the winged beasts and waded into the water to snorkel. The fish were beautiful and the coral amazing, and we took lots of snapshots with the camera we had rented out - which will eventually be added to the blog.

After hopping back on the boat we had a delicious lunch and then went to our second location - paradise reef. The reef here was even better, and Becky and I made sure we were first in the water and swam out a fair way to make the most of the fish before they all swam away. As I was taking a photo of a starfish Becky started to scream at me and as I turned round, after some time of looking confused, I saw the shark she was pointing at. It was a white tipped reef shark, and it took off pretty fast. I chased after it to try and take a decent photo, but sharks are apparently fairly good swimmers and I couldn't get all that close.

After an hour or so we were called back onto the boat and taken home, very tired but thrilled with what we had seen. Swimming around on the reef was like being in a different world and it was definitely one of the main highlights of the trip so far...

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