Australia Day 6: Great Barrier Reef!

Maybe this is just me, but when I think of Australia, 3 places come to mind immediately: Sydney, the Outback, and the Great Barrier Reef. I was more than excited to see the Great Barrier Reef, so we booked a day cruise which would take us out to where we could access the reef. I'm not exactly sure what I had in mind, but this was definitely a little different. You can't see the reef unless you go underwater. You can see how the water is different shades depending on the depth and how close you are to the coral, but without looking underneath, you are not really going to SEE the Great Barrier Reef. Kelly and I wanted to see as much as we could, so we signed up for an introductory scuba dive!

Our boat had about 70 people or so on it. The boat left at 8:30 and got back around 4:30, stopping at 3 different sites. It took a little over an hour to get to the first site and then the boat just anchored in what seemed like the middle of nowhere - just out in the Coral Sea somewhere. On the ride out, we watched an instructional video outlining some basic scuba diving skills. Each dive instructor could take a maximum of 4 people on each dive. For some reason though, Kelly and I had our dive instructor all to ourselves, which was really nice! It was like we were on our own personal dive.

Anyway, I'm jumping ahead of myself. Our dive was not until the 2nd site. At the first site, we just went snorkeling. It started raining for a bit just as we were getting into the water, but that actually made for a really cool experience! Everyone got all geared up with wetsuits, masks, fins and a snorkel-breathing thing (I actually don't know what that's called!).

Then we just went off a platform on the back of the boat and walked right into the water. The water was really warm, but a little rough at the first spot. Since neither of us had ever snorkeled before, we were having a little trouble getting the hang of how to breathe. Because the water was rough, it kept getting into the pipe of the snorkel. We didn't see all that much of the reef at the first site, because we stayed pretty close to the boat.

BUT....at the next site, we went SCUBA DIVING!!!! Seriously, this was definitely one of the coolest, if not THE coolest thing I have ever done. Our instructor Sam got us all suited up, put dive weights on us, attached our air tanks, etc. Then, we were told to walk over to the edge of the platform and just jump in! I was really excited at this point. We then headed down a couple of feet just to practice the skills we needed to know. We practiced how to get water out of our goggles if they filled up, and how to take the regulator (the thing you breathe from) out of your mouth and switch to a different one. Everyone has two regulators hooked up to their air tank, so that if something happens to yours, you can use the spare regulator on someone else's tank.

So, we had to practice taking the regulator OUT of our mouths and then putting the other regulator in. At this point, I was getting a little freaked out by the whole situation. I think that it was finally sinking in that we were UNDERWATER, breathing out of a tank. Kelly swam up because she was starting to get a little nervous as well. When we went back up to the surface, Sam told us just to try to breathe slower, that we were breathing too heavily because we were nervous. So we went back down to finish up the skills. At this point, I was breathing a little through my nose (which you are not supposed to do) and I got some water in my nose. Then, I had to do the skill where you take the regulator out of your mouth, and I somehow got some water in my mouth. This is when I really started to freak out because I felt like I could not breathe. I had to go back up to the surface again. I was so scared that I was telling Sam, "I really don't know if I can do this." I was pretty close to backing out, but I knew that I would have been so disappointed if I didn't have this experience. Sam and Kelly convinced me to try again and I just concentrated very hard on steadying my breath.
We made it down. And it was SO worth it.

If I had missed out on this amazing opportunity, I would have been so disappointed. I have never experienced anything like this before. I could not believe we were actually scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef, swimming past beautifully colored tropical fish and coral.

We were just so close to everything!

Kelly and I had rented an underwater camera so that we could capture all of this...and I think that was one of the best investments I've ever made! We just snapped away, taking TONS of pictures to remember this once in a lifetime experience. (I know I have more pictures on this post than usual, but it was just so hard to narrow down and choose which photos to use!) At one point, Sam had Kelly and I kneel down on the sand at the bottom. Then he took the camera from me, so that he could take some pictures of both of us.

After the dive, we went back up onto the boat for lunch. Kelly and I were just sitting there in absolute shock. We just kept saying to each other "We just went scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef." Now that we had the hang of how to breathe underwater, when we got to the third site, we were pros at snorkeling! We were able to keep our heads down for a long while at a time and this site was perfect for snorkeling. There were some really shallow areas where the coral was REALLY close, so we got some great pictures here as well! Once we finally got back on the boat to head to shore, we dried off and sat looking through the camera at the pictures we had taken. We were so excited to bring the camera back to the rental place and get the pictures put onto a CD! We dropped the camera off, went to dinner, and then went back to pick up our pictures. Luckily, there was a computer in the shop, where you could view your pictures. As we looked through all of them (we did get some good shots!) we were still amazed at what we had done.

This was definitely our most exciting day yet! We had SO much fun and it was an absolutely incredible experience.