Seen the Fish, Now Sitting on a Park Bench Listening to a Concert Eating Vegetable Curry and Bats Flying Above Us - This is Cairns!

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Today we took the Oceanic boat day cruise to explore the Great Barrier Reef. Wearing stinger suits we went snorkelling in Coral Bay and took the glass bottomed boat to Upolu Cay. This is a tiny area of white sand beach in the middle of the Coral sea, where we saw an amazing array of tropical fish of all sizes and colours. We also saw lots of jelly fish and a stingray, so we knew we were not accompanied by the most friendly species. In Upolu Cay the water were very shallow so we got extremely close to the various Nemos and amazingly shaped corals in the turquoise warm waters. There were also a few beautiful deep blue starfishes lying on the sea floor. The coral here forms amazing structures of different sizes and shapes, some spiky and some circular of varying colours and textures. The snorkelling here in Oz so far is some of the best we have ever experienced anywhere.

We were also given a very nice lunch on board and complimentary sparkling wine to finish our trip. It was a great experience although we noticed the water had a more milky appearance than the Ningaloo Reef west of Oz. There were also streams of coral particles floating on the surface of the water caused by the strong currents, making the clarity of the water slightly distorted. We were very fortunate, as the weather was just right for the boat trip and snorkelling, as it can rain quite a bit here!

In the evening we saw a rock band in the park whilst eating some Hare Krishna food from a food stall - very nice. We then noticed that there were a huge number of fruit bats flying overhead - surreal experience! Back to Bohemia resort for another night.

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Photos

Upolu Cay
a fantastic snorkelling experience