Advertisement
Published: December 15th 2005
We came to Cairns to do a diving course and get some sun. And so we did. Cairns itself is a city full of tourists and not much else. The beach next to Cairns is no good for swimming because of jelly fishes and crocodiles but there is a nice lagoon style swimming pool next to the beach. Although there's not much to see in Cairns the surroundings are spectacular with the great barrier reef, many beaches, rainforests and national parks.
We booked a four day open water diving course from Cairns Dive Center. It had been recommended for us and turned out to be a good and affordable choice. First two days we spent in the class room and pool learning the basics of scuba diving. Then we took a boat to the great barrier reef where we boarded on another, bigger boat, Kangaroo Explorer, and stayed there for two days. We did five dives from the Kangaroo Explorer on two different reefs. Somehow we thought that the great barrier reef would be one huge structure of corals but we learned that it is actually a set of hundreds of separate coral reefs, kilometers apart from each others, spread
on an area of total length of 2500 kilometers.
Diving was absolutely fantastic experience and there was so much to see underwater. Warm and clear tropical waters, 27 degrees and 20 meters visibility, and sunny weather made it very enjoyable. We saw lots of different type of colourful corals and fishes. Brain corals, finger corals, staghorn corals, mushroom corals, table corals, plate corals, leaf corals and many many others. Clown fishes (Nemo), many damsels, parrot fishes, butterfly fishes, angel fishes, surgeon fishes, trigger fishes and a stingray and a couple of small whitetip reef sharks and many many others. During the four training dives we had to stay in a group and do some skills underwater, like removing and replacing the regulator or mask, but fortunately there was only six of us in our group so on each dive we had time to do some underwater exploration as well. Our instructor Nikki showed us a sea cucumber, one of the few animals that breath through their anus, and we get to hold it in our hands. Kirsi didn't mind for some reason. The fifth dive we did on our own on the Moore Reef. Now we are qualified to
go diving down to 18 meters and hopefully we have a chance to do some more of it later on this trip.
While in Cairns we spent time at the Lagoon and we also visited some beaches further away from the city. Palm Cove beach and Clifton beach were beautiful and relatively quiet beaches, but also there the swimming is allowed only inside a stinger net, which keeps the jelly fishes away.
From here our trip continues to Auckland and it's nice to get into a bit cooler climate. It has been around 33 degrees and sunny in Cairns all the time we've been here, which is great for a while but is a bit too much for us in the long run.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.199s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 14; qc: 91; dbt: 0.0808s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Riku Talvitie
non-member comment
Sukellus on kivaa.
moikka taas. Tämä Cairnsin tarina kyllä taas herätti paljon hyviä muistikuvia - olinhan itsekin siellä reilu vuosi sitten. Ja elämäni ensimmäinen sukellus reefillä oli kyllä mieleenpainuva kokemus! Hyvää reissun jatkoa ja aurinkoista joulua!