Scuba Diving the Great Barrier!

Our group (from the left John, Georgie, Me, Paul and a
 french couple that only did 2 dives with us)

Kind of hard to tell, but the reef from the boat

Bright and Early the next day I was at the dive shop. The company has two boats, one of which is the day boat which I boarded in the morning then took a 1 and a half hour ride to get to the outer reef. Then I met my instructor Paul, a Belgian guy, and the two other people getting certified John, a Brit who’s working for a year as a travel agent at a hostel in town and Georgie, a Norwegian guy who just finished a couple of months of farm work somewhere in Australia to support his travels. I was INCREDIBLE relieved to hear they were staying overnight too so I would not be completely alone on the other boat. We did first dive on a place called Norman Reef  and then had an amazing lunch, keep in mind though that I have been eating mostly Peanut Butter and sandwiches or cheap Fish and Chip Takeaways so my standards weren’t too high. Then we took our second certification dive, seeing the reef in the process. It was beautiful! Later the day boat parked next to the overnight boat, Oceanquest, to unload supplies and swap the overnight passengers. It wasn’t nearly as intimidating as I expected. I met a bunch of people of people on board, crew and passengers. The boat holds around 40 but they were sitting at about 22 people that night so in a matter of hours you basically knew everybody. Plus my roommate Maria was great. She was a Spanish girl, who quit her job and bought a round the world plane ticket, and has been travelling for 4 months so far with just her backpack.

Over night boat, Oceanquest

Anyway, we did 1 more dive off the overnight boat before dinner (which was even better than lunch!). Once sun set, there was an option for a night dive. Sadly since none of my group was certified we could go. Instead John and I joined one of the crew on the top of the boat. His job was to keep watch of the divers, but from the top you could see the different groups of divers swim around by the glows of their lights underwater, plus you could see all of the sharks swimming in the boats spot light. Needless to say, one of my major life goals is a night dive now, I even considered staying another night on the boat to be able to do one. The night was pretty chill, most of the dive instructors and some crew plus a few passengers just sat around with a few drinks, swapping stories and talking.

Day boat, Reefquest

The next day, our group had our last certification dive, which was really just exploring the reef more. And finally we were done with our course. Plus we got one “fun” dive before we got back on the day boat. So John, Georgie and I went out without our instructor. It took some getting used to, mostly because we just followed Paul to the best spots on the reef but now we had to find them on our own. We did find a tunnel through the coral which was the goal of our dive.  Sadly after a few hours of diving, sun bathing , and reading, it was time to go back to Cairns. Besides missing the night dive I wasn’t too sad, mostly because Alexa, my friend from highschool was coming the next day!