We arrived in Australia on Saturday and spent our first few days in Cairns, a really nice town, very friendly with people having BBQ’s in the park, live music and just a great atmosphere. On our first day we booked a boat trip for the next day and what an amazing trip it was.
The boat was a catamaran and once on board we had to fill out some forms and decide if we wanted to do the introduction to scuba diving or not. Pete had already booked himself to do a dive and stupidly I told one of the instructors about my bad experience, so he insisted I did it. After cruising out to see on a glorious day, a bit windy, but lovely and hot, we arrived at the first dive spot Paradise Reef. Pete went out for his dive, while others on the boat went off for snorkelling. Meanwhile we kitted up and before you knew it I was in the water and struggling to calm my breathing, eventually I was in control practised the skills and was then being lead away under water to a part of the amazing Great Barrier Reef. I couldn’t believe my eyes the stunning colours, textures and different sizes of everything was incredible, from bright purple sea slugs, to turquoise fish, the cool orange and white striped Nemo fish and so much more. I felt so calm and relaxed under water, it is amazing how it can be so beautiful and yet so eerie at the same time.
We surfaced and I noticed Pete filming me, clearly waiting for my reaction, luckily it was a big smile. I was buzzing after that and decided to do the second dive and luckily I managed to convince Pete, you will understand why in a minute. First we had a delicious lunch, before heading to Michaelmas Cay for our next dive. This time I went out with Pete and had the instructor all to myself, as I was the only ‘beginner’. I touched some cool sea plants, which was weird, saw a giant clam, 2 sting rays, but one of the coolest things had to be when a turtle swam up to us and we fed it sea grass, it kept swimming around us and after that we saw four more turtles (hawks-bill and green turtles). To top it all off a white tipped reef shark swam by, it was about a metre and a half and was only metres away from us. It was crazy and we were all so excited when we reached the surface and Pete had almost missed all of that.
It was a great start to our Oz adventure and I hoped it would continue.
Today we caught our first Oz experience bus, which included a cool short walk into a rainforest and a visit to a croc farm, where we held a baby croc called Fluffy. We hand fed kangaroos, saw the amazing salt water crocs being fed; saw some dingo’s and emu’s. We are now in Mission Beach for a few days to chill out before we hit the road to Magnetic Island.
I hope you are all still enjoying the blog and aren’t bored yet .Thanks for all the comments we need more, because it is great to hear from everyone.