Hello! We've almost caught up with our blog but it seems to be taking ages - we're nearly a week out of date, the shame of it!! Let's take you back to last weekend when we went on a two day trip to dive the Great Barrier Reef. As you may know, we completed our Advanced Open Water course in Vietnam, and it was our dream to dive the Great Barrier Reef so we were really excited. We went with a dive company that we found in the town of Townsville called 'Remote Area Diving' that only take customers out at the weekend to a remote island to dive from. We thought it seemed a lot better than some of the other dive companies we'd come across which were quite uninterested when we went in to their offices and didn't really seem that enthusiastic about the whole thing. This company were a lot more positive and it's important that we feel comfortable with the company before committing to anything.

We met the bus at 6am which drove us about 2 hours up the coast to a small port where we got on to the dive boat. There were only 6 other people as well as us on the tour as well as a staff of 4 divers so it was a nice little crowd. The dive boat sped through the sea (we got drenched!) and took us to a remote, uninhabited island called 'Polorus Island'. We set up camp (the tents were already set up so we didn't have to go through the discomfort of actually setting up a tent!) and got ready for our first dive! It was great to have the freedom of doing as many dives as you wanted to and staying so close on the island to the reef. Most boats take a good few hours driving out to the reef and it wastes time, so this really was the perfect option.

Our first dive was amazing... but cold! I got a real chill underwater (the water was about 24 degrees so not exactly cold!) and after 40 minutes under I had to come up to the surface - I was really angry and disappointed about this as the rest of the group stayed under longer. Matt kindly pointed out that my body was turning blue and so I had to sit the next dive out! It wasn't so bad though, I sat on the top of the boat and sunbathed. There are so many fish swimming around this reef, it's amazing. There was so much to look at the whole time and the coral is by far the most beautiful we have ever seen. The colours are out of this world. After Matt's second dive, the boat headed back to our island and we had lunch (they even kindly prepared a veggie option for me which was really nice), and spent a few hours lying on the beach before we headed back for our third dive of the day. This dive, we were left to our own devices and Matt did a great job of navigating the two of us around the reef. Again, it was just so cold and this time we both caught a pretty bad chill so had to resurface after about 30 minutes.Some of the group stayed on board to do a night dive, but unfortunately we were both just too cold to continue so went back to camp and sat around the camp fire with large mugs of tea and waited for dinner! It wasn't so bad sleeping in the tent, it was dry and warm and we slept in army-style waterproof sleeping bags which was an experience!

We were up early the next morning ready for our last two dives. These dives were a lot better than the previous day and we had a lot more freedom and time to just do our own thing and explore at our own leisure. We saw so many beautiful fish, some of them were absolutely huge! We feel so lucky to have spotted them and swam with them. Again, the coral was just outstanding and we even saw an 100 year old giant clam at the bottom of the ocean (Matt tried to touch it but quickly withdrew when it snapped at him!). After our final two dives we got back on to the boat and they took us back to the mainland. We had such an amazing weekend and would love to dive the reef again but money is getting seriously low now so we doubt that will happen this trip! Hopefully we will return again - we really have the diving bug now!! xx