Port Douglas videos

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The weather was absolutely great about 4 weeks ago; warm sunny days, not much wind and calm seas, ideal for working. Port Douglas really seems like the place to be and work in these conditions. The dives I had were very good as well, with some of the sites having really good visibility.

On one of the days off work that I had, I went diving on Calypso, mainly because I wanted to dive a site called "Cathedral", which we went to a few times. I wanted to be able to dive it in non-working conditions. That day, most of my friends were working, so I needed to buddy up with a customer. My buddy ended up being a pretty Norwegian girl, so even better. When we got to Cathedral, I was offered a drop off (going out on the small boat that we have and being dropped off a few hundred meters from Calypso, descend and dive back). The site exceeded my expectations; awesome landscapes and some really cool swim-throughs. The dive videos of this post are from that day, but mainly from another site called "SNO"; only two are from Cathedral, because my memory card on the camera was full (stupid mistake of not checking that before).

















Puffer fish, SNO

Moorish Idol & Brain coral, SNO

Anemone fish & giant clam, SNO

6 Banded angel fish, SNO

Cathedral 1

Cathedral - Swim through

We've had school holidays for the last two weeks and as it was expected, it's been very busy for us which is good, because it means more work and good paychecks at the end of each week.



So, pretty much everything for me has been work for the last weeks; I haven't really done much besides getting together for a few drinks with the people who I live/work with. One of those times in which we got together (I think that day it was Bruce, Giselle, Jessie, Melina and I), we started talking about life in general and the somehow particular and common perspective we have on it. What all of us have in common I guess, is living a rather simple life (not worrying too much about having the latest smartphone and changing the car every two years), but rather enjoy life and live the moment more, taking opportunities to do stuff as they present themselves. We all come from different backgrounds, but we're all working in the dive industry at the moment and all of us have done a fair share of traveling, which has given us this common way to face life. Not that we criticize other ways people choose to live their lives or anything, everybody's different. In my case, this is a new experience and eventually I will go back to the "real world", but it will probably make me have a different perspective on my everyday life back home; not paying too much attention to things that have become more trivial now. It certainly has been the learning experience I was expecting before starting this trip and there's much more to be learned still.



What I've been doing since January of this year is taking a year without pay from the Navy (the Chilean Navy in which I spent the last 14 years). I was supposed to travel back home in December of this year and be back to work, but I asked for an additional year without pay (this was my intention since the beginning) and about a week ago I received an e-mail confirmation from my Commanding Officer saying that it was approved (it took a few months, so I was really glad when I got the confirmation). Two years is as long as I can ask for, so I should be back home in December of 2013 and then back to the "real world". This additional year opens up a number of possibilities and I have an ambitious plan for next year; mostly traveling on a tight budget to a lot of places and not work at all. The itinerary is still very flexible and open to suggestions, so I won't really write about it still. Anyway, I think I have achieved by far the initial goal of spending 1 year in Australia, doing a dive instructor course and work in the Great Barrier Reef for a year - pretty much a whole year of diving. I think I must've done about 400 dives so far this year and still more to come.

I think the next few weeks should be quite busy as well, so I should be mostly working.



On one of the days off I had, I went to shoot some videos of Port Douglas while riding my bike. First I did the track between my house and the Marina where I work at and then a few videos of the main commercial street (Macrossan St.) and a few places of interest. I also waited until after sunset to go back home, because I wanted to take photos and videos of the fruit bats flying out of the trees by the hundreds to go feed. It's a pretty awesome sight.



Bike ride from the house (Tropic Court) to the Marina Mirage

Bike ride from the Marina to Macrossan St.

Fruit bats flying out to feed

That same evening, a few people from the boat got together to say goodbye to Renee Wong, a dive instructor who worked with us for about 3 months. We started and ended the night at the Iron Bar, which was a lot of fun. This week, another person that's working on the boat, Jessie (who's also my housemate) is leaving Australia, so she's throwing a costume party on Friday (with a 70's theme), we'll see how that goes.

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