Is That a Sea Cucumber in Your Wetsuit, or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

Day 11:
I wanted to make sure that I didn’t spend our entire time in Cairns apart, so Jill and I scheduled a snorkeling trip together. We left from Cairns directly this time, so the morning wasn’t nearly as early as it had been the previous couple of days.

Again we were on a high-speed catamaran, this time from Reef Magic, but instead of going to three different reef sites, we went to a gigantic permanently moored pontoon. This acts as a bit of a floating city with a semi-submersible boat, a helicopter landing pad, dining facilities, an underwater viewing platform, and a moon pool for the SCUBA divers. This kind of setup has become standard for all of the snorkeling operations on the Great Barrier Reef.

Jill had a little trepidation about snorkeling at first, but quickly found her sea flippers. We did a ton of snorkeling throughout the day and explored all of the ins-and-outs of the coral head we were stationed at. I even rediscovered my love of free diving and by the end of the day was easily able to hit the deep parts of the reef at about 12 meters (40 feet) and bring back sea cucumbers for Jill to play with. Even Jill commented on the lack of fish at the reef though.

One of the interesting side effects of this particular trip was that I realized in certain cases (i.e shallow reefs), you can have just as much, if not more, fun skin and free diving than SCUBA diving. You can do it for longer and the setup and tear-down time are much reduced. I really enjoyed freaking out the introductory divers by swimming down to them and waving. They couldn’t quite understand how someone was down that deep without SCUBA gear on.

Jill Update:
Today was a really good day for us; probably the best so far even. Jill was very nervous at the beginning, but I think after she got out in the water we really had a good time together.

Glub, Glub

Day 10:
Today was the day that I finally got to see the focus of my Australian Holiday. Today was the day I went diving on the Great Barrier Reef for the first time.

It started with a very early morning (I’m wondering when I’ll get a late morning…) to catch a coach up to Port Douglas. Port Douglas is a small resort town about 90 minutes north of Cairns that mainly exists as a launching point for dive charters to the far north.

The dive charter I was on was called the SilverSonic and had about 60 people (40 divers) on it. The best diving on the Great Barrier Reef is on the outer reef and it took us about 90 minutes to get out there while traveling about 75 kilometers. Along the way the very professional staff got everyone geared up and ready to go.

We did three dives on three different sites during the day and I had quite a good time. One of the things that stood out for me was the coral. In Florida, even down in the Keys, the coral is small and sparse. It’s bleaching out quite badly and is generally in bad shape. Here on the Great Barrier Reef though, it’s amazingly alive. It was like nothing I’d ever seen. On the first dive, it was all soft corals, on the second dive it was all hard corals and the third dive was a combination of both.

The thing that disappointed me though, were the fish. When you see all of this coral and all of its brilliant colors, it’s easy to think that Florida diving can’t compare. But for some reason, there were almost no schooling fish anywhere on the reef. In Florida, even on the worst dives, you’d expect to see schools of fish in the hundreds. Heck, even on the Fish Rock Cave dive I saw schools in the thousands. But on these three dives, the divemasters acted like we were seeing a lot of fish, and we weren’t.

I’m sad to say that unless the live aboard dive boats see something completely different, I wouldn’t recommend anyone doing a whole vacation around the Great Barrier Reef. Now, don’t get me wrong, if you’re in Australia you’d be an idiot not to go dive or snorkel it (it’s incredibly easy to dive the Great Barrier Reef if you’re not certified) and I would certainly do it again. I just have to say that it’s not as live as you think it is.

Jill Update:
Another good day for Jill, apparently because we had separate vacations again. Laying poolside all day does good things for us.

Blogging Delay

Sorry about the delay in posting from the trip.  For some reason, the hotel internet in Australia is somewhere between horrible and non-existent.  I'm writing the blogs as we go along, but it probably won't be until tomorrow in Melbourne before they all get posted.

We are still alive, still together, and still having fun.

And Breathe...

Day 9:

After a week of driving up the coast from Sydney to Brisbane, we finally gave up the car and tried something new.  Another early morning, but this time a trip to the airport as we were flying to Cairns.  Other than the random insanity that is air-travel these days, the flight was uneventful.  We had some time to catch up on post cards, do some reading and generally just sit still for a couple of hours.

We arrived in Cairns and due to some construction, a lot of the airport is now outside.  But that was OK as the weather was awesome!  It's warm, breezy, and while the humidity is up now, it's expected to drop again as the week progresses.

Our itinerary makes a specific point that days we fly have nothing else scheduled on them.  This means that when we arrived at the hotel around noon, we had nothing else to do.  We got a light lunch, lounged by the pool, walked down the esplanade, and just generally did nothing.  After a week of constant movement, this felt like heaven.  The rest of the week is fully booked with SCUBA diving, snorkeling, and rainforest exploration though, so we made sure to enjoy it.

Jill Update:

I think Jill needed this day off even more than I did.  Things are going well between us, but a day off by the pool certainly helped everyone's mood.

Marsupials are Mammals Too!

Day 8:

Since we started planning the Australia trip, I've been looking forward to this one day.  I mean, who wouldn't want to visit the Great Barrier Reef, Ayers Rock, Tasmania, and Sydney.  But even in a land of amazing things to do and see, there are rarities.  Day 8 was the day we were going to cuddle with a koala!

The morning started much as the night before ended in Surfers Paradise, wet and grey.  We had gotten tickets to the observation deck of the Q1 as part of our stay the night before, so we decided to go up.  Unfortunately, the weather was bad so we couldn't see much.  But we have been to the top of the tallest building in Australia, so check that off the list.

We drove up from Surfers to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary.  In Australia you can pet koalas pretty much anywhere, but only in Queensland can you actually hold one.  We knew that there were other things besides Koala-cuddling at the sanctuary, so we informally scheduled a couple of hours there.  Boy were wrong!

Lone Pine is one of the great hidden gems of the Gold Coast.  If you are in Australia, you must go there.  Koalas are one thing but they've got other animals like wombats, crocodiles, kangaroos, dingos, and more.  The park itself reminds me a lot of Gatorland in Florida with it's informality and low walls and also that it appears to be a working park that happens to let visitors in.  Outside of the obvious Koala fun, Jill and I both really enjoyed the Kangaroos, Wallabys, and Wallaroos.  We each got a bag of 'roo food, and headed into a large pasture.  In this area there were 40 to 50 Macropods of various kinds.  We got to hand feed them and had a blast of a time.  By the time we were done, we'd been there 6 hours and taken like 350 pictures.

(fun fact:  I thought a Koala would feel like a Chinchilla, but they're actually coarse and woolly)

We eventually left the park and met up with one of Jill's high school friends in Brisbane and had a great dinner.  At the end of the night we went up to Mount Coot-tha and looked over the city lights.

Jill Update:

Jill won't let me cuddle with her, so I've sought satisfaction in the arms of another koala, Sprite.

A Big Day Out

Day 7:

So, I thought that day 2 was the longest drive of the trip, but I was wrong.  Day 4 went from Coffs Harbour to Surfers Paradise which was a 4 hour drive.

The morning started with a fun breakfast at a place called Brekky Baa.  We'd passed it on the way in the night before and Jill decided that we'd eat there.  I'm not sure how she knew, but it was very cute and had good food.  We left there to make one final stop on the way out of town.  Jill had been talking about this Big Banana since we started the planing the trip.  It was worth stopping, just to see how excited Jill got about it, but I'll let her tell you in her blog ;)

From there I had planned to drive the whole way through to Surfers (as the locals call it), but we ran into lots of construction traffic so decided to stop at a little resort called Byron Bay.  Before lunch we stopped at the Byron Point lighthouse.  I had a ton of fun there and we got a nice bit of walking and climbing down to the water and back up.  I continue to be amazed by the clarity of the water as we could see dolphins, turtles, and rays from 100 meters up by the lighthouse.

After a pleasant lunch in the town itself, we pushed on to Surfers.  The town seems very nice and we stayed in an incredible hotel, the Q1.  Unfortunately for us, the weather was absolute crap and rained the whole time we were there.  Because of this, we decided to get Italian take out and just lounged about the hotel.

Jill Update:

Jill says she's left me emotionally, but doesn't have the car keys so can't leave me physically.  Result!

Sick Without Jill

Day 6:

Today was our first separate vacation day.  Originally I hadn't planned to, but Jill convinced me to do some diving during our drive up.  She assured me that she'd find something else to do while I was out.  Check out her blog for updates on what she did.

We got up really early in Port Macquarie and drove to a place called South West Rocks.  There isn't much to this town, except for a dive charter to one of the best dives anywhere in the world.  The place is called Fish Rock Cave and consists of a dive that takes you through an island!

The ride out was unlike anything I've ever done in a dive boat.  In the bay, the seas were running like 4-6 feet and we were in a very small boat.  Impressively, everyone leaving the bay is required by law to wear a lifejacket because boats sink so often.  The passengers were also issued rain coats because there were so many waves breaking over the bow.  It was wet and wild just trying to get to the dive site.

The first dive was pretty good.  We had a new diver on the boat, so the dive master wanted to make sure that she was comfortable before the cave dive.  We dropped into a hole near the island and ran into about 30 or 40 Grey Nurse sharks.  We swam around comfortably with them and they didn't even bother with us.  In fact, if you held your breath for too long, they'd forget you were around and start bumping into you.  We also ran into a bunch of Wobbegong sharks which were a study in calm.  I saw one of the other divers put a hand within two inches of the mouth of one of them and it didn't even move.  It was impressive.

During the safety stop at 5 meters, the rough surface started to get to me.  We were banging around and by the time I got on the boat, I was feeling pretty bad.  For the first time in my life, I got sea-sick.  Not great. :(

The second dive totally made up for it though.  We dropped down on the seaward side of the island, lined up in single-file and entered the cave.  It was amazing!  There were corals and lobsters and odd looking fish.  It's completely dark during much of the interior, so it was pretty easy to get disoriented.  Towards the end, there was even a bubble cave at the top and we surfaced and had a look around.

The end of the day involved me sleeping during the drive to Coffs Harbour.  The town wasn't great and dinner was a fiasco.  I'd have to say that we were happy to see the back of it the next morning.

Jill Update:

Apparently, Jill had a fabulous day... but only when I wasn't there.  As soon as we reunited, things went downhill.  We lost a credit card, ended up eating nothing but ice cream for dinner, and staying in a shady hotel.  Good thing we're shortly going to be in Cairns, where we'll spend most of our time apart.