Dives, Crocodiles & Swings

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Cairns is all about diving, almost all the trips to the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) run from there, it’s a town built around and for tourism, but unlike Byron Bay its managed to maintain a very pleasant friendly atmosphere. I was only there one night before I started a three day live aboard scuba diving cruise around the reef with Prodive. The entire trip from start to finish was seamlessly organised, which it had to be to allow us to fit in all the eleven allocated dives. It was a very intense schedule, each day we had three dives which were twice followed by night dives. But all the exertion was well worth it, some of the best bits were the Green Turtles feeding, White Tip Reef Sharks, massive Potato Cod, schools of Bumphead Parrotfish and of coarse the reef itself, which despite cyclone damage was still amazing.
In all my previous dives I’ve just followed someone else on a definite route, but on this trip navigation was entirely ones own responsibility. It’s quite strange navigating underwater, even with a compass, maintaining a sense of direction while only being able to see 10m ahead is quite hard, add to that a bit of current and big lumps of coral everywhere and it really starts getting a bit tricky. Having managed to return under the boat quite successfully during the day, having gone where we were supposed to go, I was put forward to lead a group of six on the second night dive, I got completely and utterly hopelessly lost, I didn’t know where the bit of coral we were meant to be seeing was or where the boat was. It wouldn’t have been quite so embarrassing if the five other divers weren’t following me round and round in circles. At the very end of the dive I spotted an enormous loggerhead turtle asleep under a ridge which redeemed me slightly, surprisingly the rest of the group all seemed rather impressed with my turtle finding navigational skills & seemed to have had even less idea where they were than I had, hence I decided to keep my little folly to myself. It was a fantastic trip, with good company, food and memorable experiences; definitely one of the most worthwhile things I’ve done so far.
The last couple of days I’ve been in Cairns and the surrounding area, one trip I did was up to the Daintree River for a crocodile safari, we were lucky enough to see a couple of crocks and a few tree snakes which was cool, according to the blurb the male crocks can weigh up to a tonne so didn’t fancy a dip.
Yesterday I did the Minjin Swing, which is a giant contraption that pulls you up 50m over the jungle canopy then lets you drop down in a massive arc accelerating to over 100kph, good fun - feels like flying, though bit worrying when you pass within two feet of the platform. The best bit was the hoard of fifty Japanese tourists below me all clapping and ahhring each time I flew overhead. I’m pretty sure I’ll be in at least twenty Japanese home movies and goodness knows how many photos.
I flew back into Sydney this morning for a couple of days before I fly out to Auckland on Sunday, I’ve heard nothing but good things about New Zealand so am really looking forward to getting over there.

p.s. was very tired and hung over when I wrote the last blog, the numerous spelling & grammatical errors have been corrected to the best of my lexdictic ability & the sections of nonsensical garbage have been removed.

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Comments

[Clem]

Round and round at the bottom of the sea!
Will, I now have a vision of you leading those unsuspecting divers round and round behind you - utterly hilarious! That one has to rank alongside the up shit creak debacle. Loads of love! xx

[Mazza]

Where next?
Quite right to leave your fellow divers oblivious of the close call you led them on they could have had nightmares for months. Unless of course they find your blog! Did you end up going to Auckland? Says on your ticket that your next flight was to be Sydney to Christchurch! Well no doubt the next blog will tell us but it has the makings of a good story.....................