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We walked back into town from the rental company and chilled out in our dorm for a short while. Every night we got a free meal voucher at a local Irish pub (PJ O'Briens) so we went for something to eat there, fish and chips, which despite being very small portions was quite nice. The beer was quite expensive so we only had the one then we returned to our hostel and sat out on the balcony with our wine box were we got talking to a lovely couple from Ireland. On our way back we were approached by the ultimate party, so we booked to go on the bender on Saturday night.
We then headed back to our room and continued to have a few drinks with our room mates, Odid, James, Ross, Wong, Ivan and Veronica. Ross seemed quite rude at first, he didn't even acknowledging us, but all that changed when he discovered that we both live Bury! He went to the same high school as me although he was only 19 but we had a laugh at some of the teachers. James was a great guy, i actually started talking to him when we were
using the Internet earlier, not knowing he was our roomy. I actually kept him awake with my none stop chattering also aided by Veronica's snoring, honestly I'd never heard a woman snore like a bloke before! Odid was also a nice chap, as were Wong and Ivan, but they were a little quiet.
So I woke up on Saturday feeling a little delicate, Ivan, Ross and veronica had all moved out and James was spending the next couple of nights on a dive boat, lucky thing! Erica and I spent the day trying to sort out our east coast dilemmas. Armed with a lot of flyers we headed to the lagoon (which is a man made beach, due to the water is quite far out and there are jellyfish ) to relax and decide what we should do. The first thing we managed to get sorted was transport down the coast to Sydney, which we managed to get discount on with our joke fake ID cards we bought as a laugh in Thailand. Mine actually makes me three years younger and says i go to Oxford University, as if! Next we wanted to dive on the great
barrier reef, the trip that James did seemed quite expensive so in the end we booked to do two dives from just north of Cairns at a place called Port Douglas, where they take you to the outer reef, its a little deeper out there so you have more chance of seeing big fish and also not that many people go that far out so the reef should be in better condition, as i had heard that it is pretty knackered!
In the evening we went on the big pub crawl on an open top bus, which we were actually having second thoughts about. We were given coloured stickers so that people could identify our dating status, although despite telling them we wanted red for no they insisted on giving us green for go too, needless to say they were removed immediately. We were also given a bolt each which was a little worrying, i really didn't want to have to partake in any Tenerife style drunken games. But the evening was really good. All the boys got screws and you had to find your perfect match, which was really just a way to get people talking as there
was only one pair that fitted together! Anyway it worked really well and Erica and I got talking to a great group of lads, one of them had drunk far too much so the rest of the night was really spent baby sitting him. We all left the party and headed back to one of the previous bars to watch the football.
On Sunday we made the final arrangements, we booked a hire car for Tuesday as we decided to drive up to Cape Tribulation ourselves, as it worked out a lot cheaper and we get to make our own agenda. We also booked Fraser Island, Whitsunday Islands and accommodation package. Lots of places do these deals but most have hidden charges and aren't particularly good boats/vehicles. So we ended up paying more then expected but have got on an amazing million dollar boat, it is a catamaran which only carries 16 people, which suits us as we didn't fancy being squashed up with 30 plus people and it also has a spa, yes please!
We then did a bit on sunbathing at the lagoon before returning back to the hostel for something to eat and
an early night.
We were up early Monday morning as we were picked up and taken to Port Douglas, were we immediately told to board the boat. We hadn't even been measured up for our dive equipment, but the equipment was all stored on the boat, a large catamaran, which was great, nice and spacious.
The first dive sight was at Agincourt reef 1, called Whaler, we went down to 16 metres but as it is quite shallow we spent nmost of our time at around 6 - 8 metres. The reef was in alot better condition than i had expected. We didn't see any great fish, just parrot fish, butterfly fish, angel fish, barracuda, sting rays and a reef shark, but i still really enjoyed myself. Afterwards we had a snorkel too, where i think i got some of my best pictures as the light really enhances the colours of the reef.
The next dive sight was at reef 2, North Point, St Crispin/No body. Here we dropped down to 18.2 metres but again we spent more time at a shallower depth of 10-14 metres. This was a wall dive so much better to
be diving than snorkeling, the most spectacular thing to see was a giant moray eel, which was a GIANT.
We got back around 6pm and had another quiet night as we need to check out in the morning before collecting our hire car at 7.30 am. James had got back from his dive trip, he had a great time, he was debating on doing the Whitsunday and Fraser Island package with us, which would be cool.
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Brian
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Your underwater photos are just stunning. What camera did you take them with, they look so clear, and colourful. They're so simple, yet just gorgeous. Thanks for posting them.