Day 70 Great Barrier Reef

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LAURA: Today was an early start as we were picked up at 7am to go on a tour with Reef Encounter. Cairns is the closest access point to the worlds largest marine park and one of the natural wonders of the world. It consists of over 6,600 different species of fish, coral and molluscs in the 344,000 square kilometres of reef. Today we will visit just 2 of the 3000 reefs!

We boarded the large modern catamaran and took a seat in the air-conditioned lounge. Bacon butties were provided for breakfast along with a hot drink. The first crew member we chat to turned out to be the chief and someone I went to Kendal college with! Also turns out he has lived in Leeds for the last 9 years as his wife is from Morley, what a small world it is!

The boat sailed for about an hour while we watched a marine presentation until it arrived at the first reef. Oli was briefed about diving before we went for a quick snorkel. It was fantastic as we could see the coral and tropical fish so clearly in the water swimming all around us. Oli went for a dive while I sat up on deck in the sunshine.

OLI: The dive lasted about half an hour, after another safety briefing the instructor got 4 of us in the water and we gradually started to decent to about 10 metres. We then swam along the reef where the instructor picked up a sea cucumber and passed it to me to hold followed by a giant sea slug which was about a foot long. We then spent possibly 20 minutes swimming around the various corals and fish before returning back to the boat.

LAURA: We managed another snorkel before lunch was served and spotted a reef shark about 2 meters long on the sea bed.

After lunch the boat moved to a different reef this time is was a lot shallower. We managed to fit in another 2 snorkels before the boat headed back to Cairns. It was a great trip and we would recommend it to anyone.

PS. We did find nemo!

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