Advertisement
Published: November 21st 2008
Cop a loada this!!
Greetings from down under. Ain't nothing like being thrown against the wall and having a dog sniff your ar*e
as soon as you get off the plane at 4.00am. Once you make it through that to be told that there is a problem with your visa?? Strewth!!!!!!!! don't worry folks, as the guy put it "No worries mate, it's no biggy, happens all the time".
Nic - Our flight was via Darwin and so a double heart-attack for Dan - Taking off and landing once is bad enough for him, but to have to transit and do it twice, well lets just say he was thoroughly pleased to eventually land safe and sound in Cairns!
We found a really lovely hostel to stay at, a converted traditional 'Queenslander' - huge wooden house complete with swimingpool!
The first couple of days were spent chilling by the lagoon on the seafront and then it was time for the main event - the whole reason for visiting Australia - The Great Barrier Reef!!! We did a bit of research into what was available to us, and found that it was going to be best to visit
the "Outer Reef", the part that's furthest away from land and not so spoiled. We figured that as we were going to be travelling this far away that it was only right to splash out and treat ourselves to a 'Live-aboard' for 2 days and 1 night and a total of 6 dives....Woo hoo, how exciting!!!!!!!
Dan - So packed up our stuff and were taken to the 'Kangeroo Explorer', nice boat. We got a pretty cosy cabin although it's air-conditioned with no controls so that meant extra blankets for Nic!!! This was the first time that me & Nic were able to dive on our own by that I mean all our other dives have been with either an instructor or a dive guide or even in a group. But for our dives on this trip all we were given was a brief of the dive sites and what to expect and off we went! it was brilliant just to do our own thing and take our time looking at what we wanted not what a bloody dive guide like to see.!
Nic - It really was a fantastic experience to be on our own, a little
nerve-wracking at first but now we'll find it difficult to go back to being guided! We also go tthe opportunity to do a night dive, which we were both quite nervous about as it's just soooooooooo black down there at night! We were actually lucky to be able to take the trip on this day as it was anticipated that the once yearly coral spawning was to occur that very night - A night when ALL the coral on the whole reef gets extremely excited (to put it politely!) and lets off eggs and spores to be fertilised!.......This in turn sends the fishlife crazy as it's one big frenzied banquet for them!
Unfortunately the coral turned out to be a little impotent that evening and we only saw a very small amount of spawning....oh well, maybe next time!....we did smell quite a lot going off in the night though....ewwww fishy!!! The night dive in itself was amazing, with only your torchlight to see by, a truely surreal but really relaxing experience!
So now we're hopping on a bus down the East Coast to Mission Beach.
Back soon.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.13s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 12; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0777s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
dad john
non-member comment
glad u r ok
Great to get youre blog today and you are ok looks like you had a great dive Nic you look well in photo and got a good tan. Dan i bet the sausages arnt as good as mine keep safe and look after each other. LOVE DAD JOHN