Great Barrier Reef

The goal of Australia was to meet some family and to scuba dive. The first was certainly accomplished and now for the second!!

I flew to Cairns and then drove up to Port Douglas for diving. It’s a beautiful little tourist town. They have miles of gorgeous beaches- except you can’t swim. Too many crocs. And a beautiful rainforest- which means it’s humid as all hell and rained constantly. 

Luckily- rain when it’s hot is a lot nicer than cold rain. And when you are under water you care even less!! I went out the first day with Quicksilver. They have large boats that take a mix of divers and snorkelers out to the reef. I did three dives with a medium sized group. The visibility wasn’t that great, so we didn’t see much of the big stuff. But the coral was spectacular. I have never seen so many variable colours. There were lots of little fish and schools of big silver ones. 

My second day was with Calypso, same idea with snorkelers as well. But I lucked out to be the only certified diver on the trip. So it was me, the dive master, and an employee out on his day off. A small group just makes everything better!! We could do drift dives and not worry about coming back to the boat. A tender would be sent to pick us up when we surfaced!!

Over all, I saw so much coral and sea life. We spotted a couple sharks, some sting rays and a manta ray! Oh and a pod of dolphins were spotted from the deck. It was an amazing couple days, great diving. And my knock off go pro from Singapore held up!!

After the last dive I was chatting with some other guests and they invited me to join them for a drink at the brewery on the dock. Hemingway’s makes some good beer!! I mostly just relaxed around Port Douglas after dives, and in my wanders I even found a coffee shop with an iced Thai tea!!!

One night I stopped at a pub for dinner and it turned out to be trivia night. Being full of useless general knowledge I was happy to play. Team Lonesome Dove managed an epic last place finish- but as the only team of one I was quite pleased with out I did!! (I bombed the music section and identifying celebs by school pic.)

It was a wonderful end to a wonderful trip. But I was ready to go home- of course the final leg back wasn’t direct. I can’t ever do anything the simple way!!!