Monday 17th Sept: Snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef.

An early start for us today, off to the wharf area in Cairns to do a tour of the Great Barrier Reef. There are so many cruise tours available, it was hard to choose, ranging from very cheap to quite expensive, depending on what was offered. Each tour operator has a licence to go to a certain part of the Great Barrier Reef. We ended up choosing a company called "Passions of Paradise" and we thoroughly enjoyed our day. It started off at 7.30am and finished at 5pm, and the tour crew members were so professional and good, making all feel well looked after. I was the only person on the boat to get sea sick all the way till midday, even though it was the calmest day they had in 4 months. Silly me should've taken a sea sickness tablet before I set off in the morning…. I was able to take one in the afternoon which was effective, but this was only after I had given the local ocean fish plenty of burley to enjoy in the first half of the day! The boat crew were all very kind and sympathetic, that was a blessing to have caring looks and little cups of water brought to me as I tried looking at the horizon. The delicious lunch on board was a waste of time for me…..I sicked up the watermelon that I tried eating while Dave and everyone else feasted on a scrumptious bountiful smorgasbord of food.

But the great part of the day was gearing up into a wetsuit, flippers, prescription goggles and a snorkelling tube and jumping into the waters at "Paradise Reef". Wow! For the first time in my life I saw the world underwater….beautiful coloured fish of all sizes and shapes, lots of lovely waving corals, stingrays with pretty colours, giant clams with fluorescent lights glowing, sea slugs….what a difference it makes being able to hire prescription goggles for a mere $10 so I can see all these things. I had always assumed, being as blind as a bat without my coke bottle glasses, that snorkelling was out of my range.

The Passions of Paradise crew then took us to a lovely white sandy mini island called Michaelmus Cay, which is a bird sanctuary and they have a licence to let people go on only a small section of beach. The snorkelling here was even better than the ocean reef we had been to earlier.

I am not a very strong swimmer, and before we set off for the day the crew had checked the medical details of all of us tourists. I was flagged as a bit of a risk, as I was honest and said I wasn't the strongest swimmer etc, so I guess when I was heaving my tummy contents out later they had me listed as one to watch out for. I know I look like a bright blue tube worm in my rash top and shorts, so any time I looked like I was flailing a flipper a crew member was straight over in a rubber dingy or swimming straight to me….yes, talk about getting plenty of attention. Dave was my hero for the day as he offered to tow his tube worm wife around on a bright orange life preserver ring so she could snorkel safely. I did find it a bit tricky otherwise. And Dave looks so good underwater in a nice tight wetsuit with sexy big bright blue flippers! Snork snork!

Our catamaran boat hoisted its sails for a while going back to Cairns, but the wind wasn't strong enough to do this for long. Still didn't stop me from feeling green around the gills though! The worst thing about feeling seasick is seeing everyone else having a jolly good happy time!

Once we got back to shore, we rode back to our tent as the sun was setting, totally worn out with our adventures. Gallant Dave then went off to buy pizza for tea, as I was still feeling gutted by the sea sickness.

And then we snorkelled ourselves to sleep all night! Loudly I think….Dave was loud and he reckons so was I, but then, you can't hear yourself snore can you?

Tomorrow we are packing the tent up to ride up to Cape Tribulation for a couple of days, up through the Daintree Rainforest area.