weekend at the great barrier reef & rainforest: day 1
April 16th, 2012
This morning at 9:15 am I came back to Sydney having experienced one of the best weekends of my life. Friday night we took a flight north up to Cairns in Queensland and spent the weekend doing a few pretty amazing thing. Saturday morning we started the day bright and early by hopping on a cruise to set out to swim the reef.
Cruise was filled with relaxation on the deck, delicious food and good times. We docked not too far of a nearby island where we took a smaller taxi boat to the beach to go snorkeling. I was impressed with how many little sea critters I could see so close to shore! I discovered that the characters from one of my favorite childhood books, rainbow fish, does exist. I saw a ton of them. After chillin out on the cruise awhile longer it was finally time to get deep into the water and scuba! Not a lot of things freak me out, I’m all about the thrill and experience. Weirdly, I was extremely nervous for my dive. I didn’t tremble a bit before going skydiving, I figured I’m going to come down safely one way or another. The idea of being submerged so deeply underwater that I wouldn’t be able to swim back to shore is something was wrong breathing or if there was malfunction in my air tank really freaked me out. Nonetheless, I knew this was something I was going to do. It was really weird to adjust to, but once we got the hang of it, we were off to explore the big blue. My group consisted of Claire, Joyce, the instructor and myself. Together we linked arms and sunk lower into the ocean passing a school of fish near the surface, through a vast space of blue as we descended, and finally to a field of coral reef. It was absolutely unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. I had entered another world. And swimming so curiously in such an open space made me feel so small. My dive was half an hour, ten meters deep, and fairly close to the shore… so no, it wasn’t as pretty and colorful as the footage you’ll in the Discovery Channel and I didn’t see any sharks, but I still got to see one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World.
and yes, I found Nemo :)
