Ahoy!

Today has been one of the best days of our lives...the Great Barrier Reef is absolutely amazing!!!

We woke up early at the B&B and made our way back into Cairns to drop off the hire car, after this we walked to the esplanade and were lucky enough to make it onto the Sunlovers Reef Cruise, which wasn't setting off until 10am! This was a great company and they really looked after us all day even doing a line up wave off when we left the boat!

So getting onboard we made our way out to the outer reef, the weather when we left the city was boiling hot and sticky however as we progressed out into the ocean the sky got darker and we headed straight into a little light rain!! We were actually getting a bit worried that we might have hit a part of the cyclone...but no worries it was just tropical rain! After an hour & 1/2 boat ride we arrived at the pontoon where we grabbed our snorkel kit and got straight in!

We were so excited to finally be in the water we swam around for ages just pointing and flapping around taking in big mouthfuls of salt water every time we spotted something huge!

The only way to describe the reef is absolutely breathtaking! The coral itself is every colour you can imagine, fluorescent pinks, purples, oranges, yellows and we saw giant clam shells and sea cucumbers! The hundreds of fish are just out of this world! Every colour and shape and size and they just swim around you like you are one of them! We particularly enjoyed swimming alongside a huge school of neon blue fish that were literally inches away from our noses!

We spent the rest of the day going out onto the reef and we also got to do a short semi submarine tour of a part of the reef, which was good! I don't think I have never smiled this much before and I can't wait until we can do it again, even nearly 5 hours out on the reef wasn't enough we could have stayed there all week!

We went back to the hotel, washed up and went out for tea at a really cool pub playing lots of rock music and on the way back, we had a look around the night markets, which sell some very unusual gifts, see the pics!!!!

This has been the best day so far we both loved every minute of it!

Tomorrow we head out on a Greyhound for Townsville!

Night everyone :)

netti & chris xxxx