After breakfast we walked down to the marina where we boarded a huge catamaran called the Passions of Paradise. The back was entirely set up for scuba rigs and the front was just nets to hang out in. Unfortunately it is about this time that the battery in my camera decided to die. Just my luck. But regardless we had a great ride out to the reef, which took about 2 hours. I spotted humpback whales off the starboard bow about an hour into it and we stopped to watch them play for a while. Once we got to the reef we were divided into groups. I was in the certified group which only had 5 people diving in it. They tendered the certified group out to a little shoal called Banana Bomie and we dove off the back of a small glass bottomed boat. The water was incredibly warm at 75 degrees Fahrenheit and it was significantly warmer being in the water than the air. We went down to about 15 meters and dove through some very cool coral tunnels and swim throughs. In one you could look up as you passed through and see a cathedral up to the sky with fish swimming in circles. It was pretty spectacular. Just on the other side of a tunnel was a huge Green Sea Turtle. She was just having a snack on some algae around the reef and hung out with us a while.
After that dive we went on shore at the cay and saw all the birds nesting on the far side of the beach. Blue Footed Boobies fly the whole way from the Galapagos to nest on this specific spit of land. Pretty cool! After some time warming up on the beach we snorkeled back to the boat for lunch.
The next dive was a Paradise Reef and was incredible. I enjoyed this one more. Maybe because I was more comfortable, or maybe just because only two of us dove this one. It was much deeper than the first dive and looked like the drop off from Finding Nemo. We saw perfect little clown fish families and some pelagic fish like barracuda. We also saw a White Tipped Reef Shark, but he was very uninterested in us.
On the way back to port the weather got pretty rough and alot of people got sick, but we hung out on the front nets and got pounded by waves. By far the most fun Ive had in a long time. The past few days have been awesome but Im so tired Im not sure I could take another day of it. Id love to get to dive again, maybe on the Gold Coast. Oh and the captain of the boat complimented my sunglasses and said he had just lost his pair of Maui Jims to the sea.
Dang girl, 48 hrs there and your scuba'ing the Great Barrier Reef...sounds totally awesome!!
ReplyDeleteBeeeee CAREFUL !!!!!! Love ya !!!