Sunday we had our flight from Gold Coast to Cairns, Judy kindly dropped us up at the airport. Unfortunately they delayed the flight so we didn't leave until 8pm and didn't get to the hostel until 10.30. So we had to find our key in the safe and locate our dorm room. Were staying at travellers oasis, it's a really nice quiet chilled hostel. We drove past Gilligans where a lot of backpackers stay but with 2 nightclubs attached to it it was like party central, me and Amy were quite happy with our smaller, quieter choice! We know, we're getting old! We chatted to the guy in the dorm room for a bit about what he'd done up here then turned in as we had a 06:30 start in the morning to go dive the Great Barrier Reef!! I was excited, Amy had had a few nightmares and a lot of nerves but was excited too.
We got up early yesterday and checked in with reception- the staff here are lovely, very helpful. We set off to find the reef ferry terminal which was about 10-15 minutes down the road. Cairns isn't as big as we had imagined! We found our boats from the 10s of companies offering boat trips and checked in. The lady told us the boat was full and could hold 80-90 people so we thought it was going to be crowed and take away from the experience. Once we boarded though it didn't seem like that number, more like 30-40, and most were snorkelers with a smaller group of intro divers. As certified divers we had a very small group of 5 or 6 which was nice and we had a very good, professional dive instructor, and obviously explored the reef from eye level quite a way away from the snorkelers. Unfortunately I, along with many others, got sea sick on the hour and a half journey out to the dive spots on the outer reef. I felt a bit shaky kitting up which is never nice but once I stepped into the water I was absolutely fine. It's a shame I can't get enough of diving but to get out there my sea legs let me down! Once in the water though we descended down quite quickly. I jumped in before Amy and was waiting kneeling down on the sea bed 18m bellow with the others as I watched her come down. There was a big colourful Maury Wrasse fish that came to meet us, the photographer came down to get some pictures of us and snapped us with the wrasse they call Nigel! Nigel is a regular and always meets them, he actually followed the boat to the 3 different dive spots we visited throughout the day! He loves the company and attention and he's the photographers buddy as he literally followed him about the whole time, allowing him to get papped with just about every diver and snorkeler! Amy came down and had a few snaps taken too but she wasn't comfortable with her mask and regulator so she decided to go back up to the surface and snorkel that spot.
We did our dives at Flynn reef, the first one at 'Coral Gardens', we were down for 48 minutes saw the beautiful coral, a white tip reef shark sleeping on the sandy bottom and a giant clam along with lots of pretty, beautiful fish! The second dive we swam by a coral wall and saw lots in there then as we moved away to more corals we saw a fairly big green sea turtle gliding gracefully off to our left! He also had a small Kuhl stingray friend that was following him in the same direction. The 3rd dive was cool as we did a lot of much shallower dives through stunning coral, where we swam through areas to get to another beautiful opening of colourful corals and anemone. We saw two true nemo clown fish here that were poking out of their anemone. They're quite rare on the reef now but there's plenty of bigger clown fish about (tomato Great Barrier Reef fish). We saw another turtle hiding in a little cove but he came up and was quite visible, saw a small spotted box fish and I got to have a gentle feel of some mushroom coral. Some beautiful dives! Amy snorkelled the 2nd site but gave it another go on the third, she was still quite nervous but did the full 43 mins and was happy to see the turtle.
We had afternoon tea and then headed back, the boat wasn't so bad on the way back but I was glad to get off.
We were pretty tired so we headed back to the hostel and showered before popping out to Coles to grab something for tea. We decided to take Dominos up on their $5 dollar pizza menu about £3! Win, just what my hungry tired tummy needed!