Great Barrier Reef
Up early today to board the "Ocean Freedom" ship to snorkel the reef! Boarding at 7:15 so we could spend a good 6 hours at our dive/snorkel site- Upolu Cay. Thankfully the marina is very close to our hotel- made our lives easier. The trip out seemed kind of long- it really was only about an hour and about 30ish miles off of the shore. The best part was that the ship was small, so not tons of people and Captain Gordy and his crew were top notch- very attentive and fun to hang out with for the day. Our first dive site was a part of the reef with lots of reef area and a rough bottom. We snorkeled for a while, dried off and then went on a glass bottom boat ride, where our guide explained the ecology of the reef and the different types of coral.
Yeah, another bad hair day for me, it was windy, okay? :P
Deep parts are blue, reef area appeared greenish...
It was another beautiful blue-sky day! A bit hotter here than in Brisbane, around 85F and the water was 75F- bath water pretty much...awesome!
We ate lunch and chatted with our snorklemates. It is amazing how many people we have met from all over the world in our travels- we ate with a lady from Toronto and a couple from Barcelona. We swapped stories about how far we had travelled and where we had been before Cairns...Anyway, after lunch, we headed to a spot not far from where we had been, but with very different ecology. This spot had a sand bar that we could stand on- miles out in the ocean, very cool! The bottom was shallow and sandy. We spend over an hour wandering back and forth between reef and sandy areas to see what was there. Lots of beautiful tropical fish, coral, and a couple of rays. We had the best time and were pretty much the last ones to leave the water.
(The sand bar is appearing in the upper left hand corner of the photo.) As much sunscreen as we both applied, we both managed to get burned in various places... :(
After 6 hours on the reef we headed back in- I managed to get a couple of decent photos of Cairns from the water. It is pretty built up, but overall not that big...
Another excellent day!!! Exhausted after our day out on the water, we actually walked the Esplanade, ate Turkish food and headed to bed...
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