Last day at Sea

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Waking up on our second morning on the boat, I was soooo ready for dry land. At this point I must take the opportunity to thank Dan for his patience, kindness and tolerance of me for the previous 48 hours as I am sure by this stage I was certainly wearing him down!

Doing my usual pill popping and cotton wool trick, we made the decision that the 06.00am dive really wasn’t necessary and so stayed in bed while others faced the early morning exercise drill!

We joined them for breakfast and then decided to not dive at 08.00am but have a snorkel instead as several people had come back yesterday afternoon reporting sighting's of Turtles whilst snorkelling. This was lovely although the dive site was really designed for divers and a lot of the good stuff was a little too out of reach from the surface. We did see one or two huge puffer fish and leopard spotted fish.

At 11 we joined the group for our final dive; this one was a little different. We had decided now that we had qualified as Open Water Divers we would take the next step and complete our Adventure Dive certificate (hence the photography work yesterday). We were learning to navigate our selves under water by using compasses and other means to find our way around. Again we passed with flying colours and so have two cards now proclaiming our Diving proficiency!

At the end of the Dive we swam around the Coral Bommie of East Timor Reef and once again played with the Giant Clam's. They are amazing to touch, and you can put your hand in them as they close up to protect themselves. They feel like velvet tongue's! We only touched the things we knew were safe to touch following our session on Tuesday night with loony Paddy and after watching our Dive Instructors. The amount of fish life on the over hang of the wall was amazing on the final Dive and we would loved to have stayed longer but as we had been down over 30 mins everyone's air was running low. It is a legal requirement here to hit the surface with at least 50 bar remaining - so we headed back to the boat for one last group celebration on the Dive bar under the back of the boat and then climbed back aboard!

We chilled out on the boat's sundeck for the rest of the day and headed back into Cairns on the day boat Sun Kist later in the afternoon. On the way back we saw a lot more of the Coastal Rainforest and some Bush Fires in the forests. There were also some beautiful little beaches and sand cay's we kept going past. Once back in Cairns we ate absolutely loads for Dinner as Clare's sea legs disappeared!

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Comments

[Cels and Marie]

Hi Clare and Dan great to read about your travels to date. We knew you would have a wonderful time when you described your plans a few months ago but reading your daily updates just shows us what a fantastic adventure you've planned and are having. It's really lovely to hear all the detail, I think both Ashley and Adam would like to now travel the world! We're all keeping well (doing the usual crazy things like XMAS shopping etc). Keep the details (and pictures) comming. Have to sign off now, it's just past mid-night in England and I've got to be at work early tomorrow. n. Love Cels, Maris, Ashley and Adam