Out on the GREAT BARRIER REEF!

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Up early and off to board our smaller transport boat which would take us out to the ‘Kangaroo Explorer’ which would become our home for the next 2 nights.

The nearly 2 hour boat ride wasn’t too bad, for someone like me (Clare) who does not make friends with boats on any occasion! We were shown to our rooms, had a quick lunch and then our first dive on the Barrier Reef was at 1.00pm.

This was a little bit of a shock to the system, although the water was 26 degrees (mmmm cosy!) we had to wear stinger suits (not wet suits) due to the jelly fish risks. Out here they have jelly fish called Sea Wasps and various types of Box Jellyfish. To put it bluntly, you'd be lucky to survive for more than an hour and a half if either stung you.

With Stinger suits on making us all look like extra's from Kill Bill, we all descended in the water and kept our buoyancy well, this dive was just a tourist dive to get us used to the salty sea and our surroundings. To be honest we were all concentrating so hard on ourselves, it was hard to pay attention to the wildlife, but we did see a giant clam in action, many different varieties of coloured fish and we found Nimo!

Our lowest point was about 16 metres and we were down for about 28 minutes, but as we were all a little nervous we were using up more air then usual and Dan had to share air with one of the dive instructors to keep him going with the rest of the group - his extra size and lung capacity means he sucks through a 7 litre tank in no time! He did really well though and stayed really calm - and at least the buddy breathing ticked one of our essential skills off the list!

The next dive would be at 4.00pm after the boat had moved to the next dive site on the reef.

Now this is where things started to fall apart slightly… I didn’t survive too well after this move and couldn’t bare to get back in the water for fear of being sick - I suffer really badly from Sea sickness as my previous seaborne activities have proven. Dan dived in without me and ‘buddied up’ with one of the tutors; I will hand over to Dan in one moment who will fill you in on everything he saw.

While he was away, I got lots of advice from the crew who obviously find people like me all the time! I had already been taking Kwells (a well recommended travel sickness drug, which was working wonders until now!). I was then advised to block one ear with cotton wool as travel sickness is related to the inner ear and this can help with balance, so off I went to block an ear. Then when the group came back, one of our dive pals is a doctor and recommended an anti-nausea pill which I was happy to pop away on too!

By the end of all this I was completely knackered and completely lethargic as these were all drowsy tablets, I fell asleep without dinner.

Over to Dan for the exciting Dive…

My second Dive was shallower than the first - about 8m and gave us all chance to prove our skills for the instructor - mainly safety things like buddy breathing, regulator removal and replacement, taking our SCUBA gear off underwater and putting it back on again etc etc. The most amazing thing about the dive though was whilst we were practising our skills on the sea bed - a 2m long White Tip Shark circled round us for a few seconds before swimming off into the darkness. It was absolutely awesome to encounter a shark on only my second Dive - god knows how we all kept our regulator's in! (Don't worry Mum they only have relatively small teeth compared to Jaw's - and Paddy say's they can't eat you)

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Comments

[Nicky]

Wow !!!!!!!!!!!!
Hi Guys , what an amazing few days !!!!The pictures are absolutely stunning . xxx

[Bex]

Steven Spielberg eat your heart out
Hey buddies, this sounds fantastic, shark and all! And I can't believe you are making the 6am starts. Is this going to become a regular occurrance when you're back in the UK?..........yeah right! Move over Daniel Craig, you've got some 007 competition.....ttfn x