El Great Barrier Reef

One of the most amazing experiences of my entire life. And not a single photo of it.

More on that in a bit. 

The group took a 2 hour boat ride out of Cairns and arrived at one of the 7 natural wonders of the world, the Great Barrier Reef. We were handed a sheet with a huge list of boxes we were supposed to "tick" to see if we would meet the requirements in order to scuba dive:

• Do you suffer from anxiety? No✓
• Do you have asthma? No✓
• Have you consumed alcohol within the last 8 hours?...Yup✓

I may have had a quick gander at some of the Cairns night life the night before. 

But no worries! (a very popular phrase here) I was allowed to scuba dive, something I never saw myself doing but am thrilled now that I did. 

But, now its time for the bad news. Like many other Australearn students, I'd used my camera's entire battery life the day before at the rainforest (so you better have enjoyed those pics). Some people did have cameras though, and I'll hopefully be able to snag a few of theirs to post. My temporary solution:

I welcome you to use your imagination to combine the two pictures. If thats not good enough, you can literally superimpose the images and get your desired result. I'll leave it up to you. Oh, but remember to take my hat off. I wasn't wearing one down there. 

The reef was unreal. I swam around the set of "Finding Nemo" for a half hour. The picture above is actually not far off. The colours were ridiculous. (I'm trying to get used to Australian spelling so ignore the typos.) So many amazing fish. Coral everywhere. An underwater game of catch with a sea cucumber. This was unreal. 

The other group down there at the same time saw a sea turtle, but it was too stealthy for my eyes. But the thing was crawling with life. I saw our diving instructor give the "clown fish" hand gesture and point to an anemine (is that how you spell it?) exactly like Nemo's. Sure enough there were little clown fish roaming about within it. The thing I probably enjoyed the most was seeing the sand underneath me moving and then coming to the realization that it was a sting ray. I think we've all seen one particularly famous example of how dangerous those thing have the potential to be. They also said that very occasionally sharks will swim in that area but only friendly ones. Apparently they're the kind you can chase and give a friendly slap on the tail to. But I didn't get to see a shark and that might be for the best. 

If any of you have experienced a day like this then you know how amazing it is. If you haven't and ever get the opportunity to do so, in no way should you pass it up. I hope to post some of the reef photos people took that day. Keep an eye out for them.