Cairns - and diving the Great Barrier Reef
Trip Start
Sep 12, 2006
1
24
33
Trip End
Ongoing
Cairns,
Australia
Thursday, March 20, 2008
My fist day involved my first day of my dive course with Prodive Cairns!! It was awesome to get the scuba gear on and breath under water, and my class was a good group! My 2nd night in Cairns was great too. Everything just seemed to go right! I met so many people, including a guy who did some fire twirling, and so we got some fuel together and spun some fire by the pool. And boy this attracted the ladies attention!! It was funny actually, but (and please excuse me for being rude and saying this but it was someone else who came up with this expression) they dont call fire twirling the "panty dropper" for nothing.. heh heh.. I did end up meeting a very attractive girl from Norway who was trying to pick me up.. and I would be lying if I said I wasnt loving the attention! It was a good night. :)
Needless to say I was a little tired for my dive course the next day, seeing as I had a 6.30am pick up. But I managed to get through the day no probs. I tried to get an early night, but alas, no mater how much I try I just seem to end up out again.
The next day was my 2 night, 3 day reef trip and I was excited.. and tired! Pick up was at 5.50am! But breakfast was on board the boat, and it was a good breakky. Our first dive started as soon as the boat stopped! We jumped in and it was exciting to get in the water and go under for the first time in the sea. Our first 4 dives were all training dives where we had to complete various tasks such as taking off our mask, buoyancy control, using our buddys emergency air supply, and making emergency ascents.
My first pleasure dive after I was certified was on day 2 and it was amazing! We got to go out without out instructor, and I went out with my assigned buddy mark, who was a crazy canadian fellow. We saw 2 turtles, of which one of them was a HUGE turtle called barry. Ironically they named barry before they could determine the turtles sex, and barry is actually a girl, but the name sticks. I couldnt believe how MASSIVE he was!! He (or she) was about as big as me, and gave me one hell of a fright when he caught my eye.
That night we also got to complete a night dive!!! It was SOOO COOOOL!! Off the back of the boat you could see hundreds of fish in the water with a few sharks circling around too...a little nerve racking seeing this and thinking "im going to jump into that!?" it was all worth it though. I only saw one shark however, and that was in the distance. I t was weird diving at night as you could only see where you pointed your torch, so you never knew what was going to jump out of nowhere. Sometimes you can "play god" with your torch - you shine it on a small fish for a while, and then a big fish will come out of nowhere and eat the little one! As we were last group we didnt see all that much as the other groups had scared much of the life away, but I did see some massive crayfish!
The next morning it was up at the crack of dawn again for a deep dive, this time to 30 metres. It was fascinating to see the colours change as you went deeper - things mainly getting bluer as the red light was absorbed by the depth. Another thing that can happen at that depth is people can get nitrogen narcosis which is nothing serious, but is kinda like having a beer when you are thirsty and hungry - it goes to your head and gives you that buzzy feeling... while other people can feel tired and want to sleep. It effects eveyone differently, and I didnt really notice much of a change. Its not a bad thing, and will go away as soon as you rise into shallower waters.
After the deep dive it was another pleasure dive with my buddy Mark, and this was an awesome one!! By this time the sun had come out and we were at an excellent location on the reef. We saw all sorts of marine life and heaps of beautiful coral formations, and the very end I got to swim with a reef shark!! He wasnt a huge one though, and I chased him and he swam away. :P As we were pretty shallow we managed to make the dive last nealy an hour!! This was my favourite dive so far, but unfortunately it was my last one on this trip. After 3 days out on the reef it was time to return back to the main land, say good bye to all the wonderful people I had met, and catch an over night bus to Airlie beach for 2 more nights on a boat in the whitsundays, only this time it was a racing yacht.
Once I was back on land however I had the worst sea legs ever!! When I was standing still I started swaying, when I was leaning on things I thought it was moving, and it wouldnt go away! It was so funny! Apparently the only cure is alcohol... it counter acts one sway with another sway and you end up standing straight..... or so the theory goes. We all had dinner together at the rattle and hum, and I left them at about midnight to catch my bus.... the journey never stops!
I have to say I was really really impressed with the entire trip. It was professionally run, well organised, and a lot of fun at the same time. The food was excellent, the facilities were all clean and new, and I would highly highly recommend this trip to anyone even thinking about diving!! CHEERS PRODIVE!
To check out some pics from the trip I will upload em soon to.... (you will have to select the cairns photos).... http://picasaweb.google.com/mrphillipthomas
