The Great Barrier Reef (03/07)

My trip to Australia was spent entirely in Cairns on the North-East coast where I could spend my time in the rainforest or observing The Great Barrier Reef, a dream come true!

March 10, 2007

I just finished a two day one night snorkel trip on the Great Barrier Reef and it was absolutely amazing! I came considerably close to 2 sharks, the first sighting was on a guided tour with a dive instructor, though we were just snorkeling. When I saw the Reef Shark, it was about 4 feet long, I told the guide, who wanted to get closer, so i started swimming towards it and turned back to show him where it was but in that split second the shark it was gone. Then I got up close to a huge sea turtle, probabley 2 1/2 feet across it's back. I've always loved swiming with turtles and admiring their ease of gliding through the water. The guide, a 20-something year old tan local with dark shaved hair and friendly smile was happy to share his love of this phenomenal place. I watched him swim down about 8 ft to this giant clam, it's span of it's mouth (?- whatever you call it) was curvy and as long as my arm, and slamed shut with he reached down to touch it, then he picked up this black sea cucumber with soft spikes on it, probably 16 inches long and 4 inches wide, sort of a rectangularish shape, and let me hold it. It was such a weird feeling because holding it in my hands I could sense it was alive, even though it looked like a piece of a black tree branch and didn't move noticably. Next he handed me this vibrant blue starfish, then he swam down and got an Elephant Sea Cucumber which I also held. It was really amazing.
Back on the boat I met some of the other travelers. There were 6 snorkelers and 20 divers, in addition to the crew of about 12. We slept in little cabins that consisted of 2 beds a small desk, a mini closet, a t.v. and a private bathroom. My bunkmate was a petite, lively British woman, maybe 50, named Sarah. She had recently gone through a divorce, and rather than taking her half of the money from their old house to put toward another one in which she'd be stuck paying off for the rest of her life, she decided to go do all the things she'd never been able to before. Her trip began in January in South Africa, then to Singapore for a month, after which she cycled acrossed the enire country of Vietnam, now here in Australia, where's she spent the last few weeks. Next she's off to New Zealand, then Fiji, Tahiti, the Cook Islands and finally the US. She says she plans on writing a book. I think that's great she's being so adventurous, I would do the same thing! Its so important to make this life exactly what you want it to be.
Some of the other people staying on the boat include a guy from AZ, a chic and her mom from SFO (which were the first Americans I met), tons of Europeans, this cute girl from France, whose a Flight Attendant in Austria was there with her dad, these two young guys my age from Sweeden, and one of them was asking me if I've been to Beverly Hills or the OC- That was my first clue about how people all over the world are obsessed with American pop-culture. Then this girl from Denmark was telling me how over there they say all the trendy US things, like Chill, or if they get a new phone cover they say, "Look, I pimped my phone!" I was totally cracking up because sure we have that embarassing TV show, Pimp My Ride, but NO ONE would ever say, I pimped my phone.
I got up early this morning and was in the water at about 8:45, staying in until after 10 am. This time I was mostly by myself, and I saw another shark (we were in a different location, we dived in 3 different places total). This shark was about 5-6 feet long. The first shark was swimming away from me, that's probably why I wanted to follow it, this one was not. I don't like the feeling of watching a shark swim towards you. It was probably about 20 feet away (and getting closer), then I stopped, turned so that we wouldnt be face to face in about 4 seconds, but luckily it stopped too. It felt like the shark and I were actually in the same living room, and my living room is not exactly large, so I was quite happy when it felt unentertained or like it had done it's share of freaking out the humans for the morning and swam away. A shark encounter was nothing I'd ever hoped to add to resume, but it was probably my favorite thing about the Reef (probably just for the shock value). I asked one of the mates on the boat what the biggest shark out there was (because we were a 2 hour boat ride from land, right in the middle of the ocean!) and he said they get hammer heads and tiger sharks, but they never come up becuase they dont like the noise of the boat. Now he seemed like a very intellegent bloake- with a trendy spiral piercing in his ear, but I'm not sure it he's seen a shark lately, because they dont have ears, so his theory one them not liking the sound of the boat, might be a bit off... but who am I, definately not an Ocean Reef Adventures Crew Member-
The Reef had the most beautiful fish, along with TONS of Jelly fish, but not the kind with tentacles, they will murder you, the ones there are la clear color with a pinkish purple hint to them and about as big as a grapefruit- lots of coral, starfish, little nemos, and a huge fish about 3 feet long with these gigantic lips, like freakin JAY Z- seriously just these lips that were as wide as two of my fingers put together, and I didn't like the look of his teeth, he looked fat old and cranky. Some fish I saw were just so bright and beautiful, there were neon purple with gorgeous yellow spots, or turqouise with orange fins and every other color you can imagine.
On my second dive out today I was also by myself, and I really just wanted to make sure I saw everything being my last time before we returned to land. I was having so much fun, saw some more turtles which I followed for a while, then I'd swim down about 3 1/2 feet or so to see the coral up close, and I guess I wasnt really paying attention to where I was going, because I looked up after a while just to see how close I was to the boat, and there was a man in a little motor boat about 80 feet a head of me waving his arms and yelling, COME HERE! I checked behind me, and when I realized he must be calling to me I yelled back, "What's wrong?" but my snorkel was in my mouth so he couldn't exactly hear me. I started swiming towards him- which was against the current, anxious to find out why they sent out the rescue boat- was there a Great White spotted and he was rounding everyone up? Were there killer eels attacking? Or maybe he wanted to take me to a different spot and show me something cool- so I finally made it up to the boat exhausted I ask, "What happened?"
"You're too far out and no one could get to you out there, youre right in the middle of the reef and its too shallow, and you should only go about 100 meters from the boat, youre about 'alf a km out!" He was pissed.
"Oh, sorry- what time is it?" I asked, since I knew we could dive til about noon, and he's says, "Time for you to come back."
So he motored me back to the boat- which was funny, because the boat I had thought was mine, that I'd been heading in the direction of, was definitely not ours, and about a mile away from ours, so I told him, "Oh I thought that was our boat!" pointing across the water. Not amused, he's replies, "Yeah, thats why you ought to pay attention." As we pulled up to our cruise ship everyones looking at me like, was she drowning? Why'd they rescue her? The rest of the day people were asking, "So I heard you tried to escape?"
As I'm sure you can see, I loved the reef, it was so fun, such an amazing experience like nothing I'd ever seen before. Now tonight I'm staying in a hostel, the same one I was in before, and I have to stay in a mixed dorm. I asked the man working the front desk if there were any beds available in the all girls dorm. "Why?" he asked, "You afraid of boys?" The other people around laughed at his HILARIOUS joke, and I said no accepting the key to the mixed dorm. The mixed dorm turned out to be 5 guys and me. I'm definitely not shy, I just was a little nervous so I tried to be hard core as I walked in to my room with 10 eyes staring at me peculiarly. One of the guys asked me with his British Accent, "Where might you be from?" Doing my best impression of a gangster walk, I slung my back pack off my shoulder and on to the only open bunk, "California, you heard of it?" I asked trying to sound hard core... and he saw right through it, and we both started cracking up at my front. Turned out that I had way more fun bunking with the guys than any of the nights I spent in the girl's dorm. The guys wanted to practice their American accents with me, saying stuff like, "Sweet, Dude". Bloody good times indeed :)