Great Barrier Reef Dive Boat

(see map) Shondra: When Mike and Trin left for their trip, we thought it would be a great idea to try to meet up with them somewhere along the way.  We decided on Australia and made plans to go scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef.  Mike and Trin are “ScubaPros” and Ryan and I are just beginners, so we thought it would be a good chance to get some diving tips and follow their lead underwater.

We happened to be on the same flight as the Murphy’s from Sydney to Cairns, so we met up at the airport and after ten months of not seeing them, it was great to catch up.  Once we made it to Cairns, we checked into our hostel, and headed out to see the town.  We had an espresso, dinner, Mike shaved his beard, and we headed to bed early in preparation for our 6 AM dive boat pick up.

Ryan and I were wide awake at 4 AM (jetlag) and took some photos of the low tide off the Cairns boardwalk.

Then we were off to the reef on our dive boat, the ScubaPro II.  

We motored out to the first reef, and it took about three hours to get there, in pretty rough waters. None of us had our sea legs yet, so we may have gotten just a little sea sick. But as soon as we started diving, we all felt much better.

The dive boat had a great schedule, it went something like this:

6:00 – Dive
7:00 – Breakfast
9:00 – Dive
10:00 – Snack
12:00 – Lunch
2:00 – Dive
5:00 – Dinner
7:00 – Dive
8:00 – Cake

We loved it, the food was great and although it seems like a lot of eating, we were starving every time we got back from a dive.

Since Ryan and I were doing the certification course, we didn’t get to dive with Mike and Trin until the end of Day 2. But we had some great dives when we did get to go together. We saw some amazing coral and heaps of tropical fish and other sea life. Some of the highlights were turtles, reef sharks, lionfish, cuddlefish, eels and parrot fish. Mike and Trin said this was one of the top ten dive spots in their fifty dives. Ryan and I had never dove anywhere else, so we were very impressed.

Trin all geared up to dive

There’s one of the many reef sharks!  They’re little guys….not very scary at all.

One of the reefs we dove on

Overall, it was really amazing to dive the Great Barrier Reef and especially to be able to do it with friends.  We were glad to be able to spend some time with Mike and Trin and we even learned some things we hadn’t known before.  We found out that Mike is fascinated with China and Trin loves to do laundry, very interesting!