The Reef

Lots of beautiful coral and a bazillion fish later, we are back from our first 2 scuba dives on the Great Barrier. This morning we left the pier at Cairns and boarded an 82-foot Catamaran with approximately 60 other snorkelers and divers and headed out for a 90 minute cruise to the reef. Our first stop was Oyster Reef which was the site of both of our dives today. The weather wasn’t the best and the water conditions were a bit rough but we suited up and took the plunge. Under water we were able to see giant clams, a sting ray, star fish, crabs, sea cucumbers, lots of fish and of course the coral. The sun came out and after a gourmet buffet lunch we headed to our second site, Upolu Cay – a U-shaped naturally formed sandy cay that has many sheltered areas offering calm conditions and a shallow bottom. Many years ago it was nothing more than a sand bank becoming more stable as the sediment accumulated over time. It is constantly changing shape in response to water conditions.

Yesterday morning we went to a local market and just spent a bit of time wandering around. We originally planned to go to an Aboriginal culture park, however once the afternoon came around we decided we’d rather be lazy and work on our tans instead. A 5-minute walk from our hotel is a lagoon which sits on the shore of the beach. It’s great… lots of sand and grass for laying out surrounding clear cool freshwater resembling a pool, with a walking/biking esplanade running along the perimeter.

Last night we spent the evening on our dinner cruise I mentioned in the last blog post. We enjoyed a 4-course dinner buffet of a little bit of everything, including many seafood dishes. We cruised along the calm waters of Trinity Inlet on a large boat for two and a half hours and listened to (kind of horrible) guitar music. It was funny – the guitarist, dressed in a straw hat and Hawaiian shirt with huge pineapples, was desperately trying to get the crowd to dance or sing along by the end of the night. He attempted to play well-known songs (mostly from the 70’s-90’s) in his nasally Australian accent. The last song of the evening was “Take Me Home” which was his final attempt at crowd involvement. I’m not sure why he thought many people other than Americans would know that song. Sure enough, we may have been the only two so during the chorus he came to our table to play and we sang it as loud as we could while he did back up. I’m sure it was quite impressive to all the foreign tourists. In fact, he had some of the lyrics wrong and we had to correct him… we informed him that the lyrics are “mountain mamma” as opposed to something he was singing which seemed to be “my mother.”

Jessica is wearing a Scopolamine patch for the next 24 hours to prevent motion sickness on the boats. Because of the side effects, she is entertaining with her dilated pupils – tripping around and not being able to read. She holds reading material out at arms distance like she forgot her reading glasses or something.

Tomorrow we are headed back out to the reef for another day of diving (different boat, different reef.) Hopefully tomorrow evening I will be able to upload pictures because we’re changing hotels and with anticipation the wireless connection will be fast enough to post pictures. We can’t believe the trip is almost over! Our best to everyone reading this.