The Great Barrier Reef

We managed to get to Cairns eventually, thank God, bypassing all the disaster areas by simply flying over them. It was hot there and the remnants of the cyclone were still covering the sky with cloud and soaking us with rain.

Feeding a turtle

We stayed in a cute but noisy hostel, who picked us up from the airport and even told us that we could get out to the Great Barrier Reef the next day if we wanted too. So we were delighted with this, as we'd resigned ourselves to not seeing the Reef.

We went out in the awful weather on a big catamaran with about 60 other people onboard. There was meant to be a submarine as part of the trip to see all the underwater life without getting wet but it wasn't on because the sea was too rough. This was a pity cos I wasn't going snorkelling as I had a chest infection (well to be honest even if I wasn't sick I wasn't sure about doing it as I've never swam out of my depth - except in a pool - what a wuss eh?)

Fish in the Reef

Vinnie decided to do a scuba dive and he was given a talk and a quick lesson on how to use the equipment before a little test in the water off the back of the boat. He saw Moray Eels, tonnes of fish, amazing coral and even got to feed turtles 25 metres under the sea!! The photos are brilliant.

There were two reefs that they brought us to, the turtles were at the first one and there was this giant Napolean Wrass at the second one who loves people and kept coming right up to us. He was about 1.5 metres long and apparently he is over 50 years old. We got lunch onboard at some stage too which was a nice feed.

Giant Clam

So loads of snorkelling and underwater photos later we got back to dry land and hit the sack early before our 4am rise to get a flight the next morning to Ayers Rock. Ugh!!