Australia: The Great Barrier Reef

Location Two: Cairns and the Tropical North
Have you ever found paradise and knew that in that location was perfection and you never wanted to leave? Cairns would have to be one of my favorite places on earth that I've been to so far! The perfect temperatures, the tasty cuisine, the gorgeous views, the community life - it was all sheer vacation perfection. Not to mention: the GBR!

Sometimes the rain is worth the rainbow

I have been SCUBA certified since my senior year of high school (though not quite as experienced as I'd like to be). Once we decided we were going to Australia, we figured we should go big or go home. We had no other option but to dive the Great Barrier Reef. So Travis took classes to become certified and I went on a little refresher outing myself to get up to speed. It more than paid off as this was my personal best dive to date. The reef definitely lived up to it's legend but for reasons I still can't quite explain. We didn't necessarily find the most amazing, exotic creatures or the clearest water, we didn't even see the most bright and vibrant coral I've ever seen. But there was just something so, majestic, about this indeed "great" reef. I can't quite explain it but it was certainly an adventure of a lifetime and quite possibly my favorite part of our whole trip.

And it stretched all the way to the city behind us

Remember that part about not everything going according to plan?
Funny thing about flight changes, they seem to cause a sort of domino effect; especially when you have every detail planned down to the second as tightly as we did. This became evident with our very first regularly scheduled event in-country. Change in plans was becoming quite the norm ever since leaving the states (even before) and once again, we just had to smile at our circumstances, pick ourselves up, and keep on trekking. We were becoming quite good at finding compromises at this point and this situation wasn't any different.

You try smiling with a regulator in your mouth!

As we got onto our boat, we were soon separated into three groups: the wannabes, the newbs, and the hard core - aka the snorkelers, the new kids in their open water course, and the already certifieds. We were quite happy to be in the minority that was the latter group and were pulled to the top deck to get some instruction and a bit of a refresher from our dive master who would be leading us. At the very beginning of his spiel he asked us, "Now, will any of you be flying tomorrow?" Barely knowing what day it was, Travis and I looked at each other inquisitively trying to figure out when exactly our next flight was until it hit us: we would in fact be flying out the very next day and it was an early one at that. 

A little sun peeking through

For those of you who aren't as adept at the world of diving, depth and height don't really mix when an air tank is involved. Decompression sickness is a very real thing and it is recommended by any dive company that, to avoid getting "the bends," you wait at least 18 hours before flying if you've been diving, 24 hours would be even better (and is the strongly recommended time difference by the Australian powers-that-be). We were sittin pretty before when our original planes were scheduled. We were actually set to go diving the day before and therefore would have had an entire day to play with before flying again. However, because we had to push our travel time forward a whole day, we had to reschedule our dive for the next day, thus backing it right up against our next plane ride. You get the picture.

A certain someone's first open water! Welcome to the sea, Travis!

We had a decision to make as we had come all this way to do this, this was the GBR after all, and it wasn't our fault that our travel plans and perfectly laid timing had been thwarted. However, we also knew not to mess around when it came to such a serious potential medical condition and wanted to make the wise decision. As it were, we were set to have 3 dives with the last one finishing around 2:00pm or later. With our plane leaving at 7:20am the next day, we wouldn't have even hit 18 hours, let alone 24. So we thought about it, signed our safety waivers the crew on board were very quick to throw at us (with a witness signature needed and everything), and finally realized that if we just changed our last dive to a snorkel, we would be within comfortable time limits finishing our second dive right before lunch and giving us close to 18 hours before flight. Again, we had grown well accustomed to compromising and this was no exception. We were pleased enough with our decision, our dive master approved, and we suited up ready for a day of epic underwater exploring.

Morning sunrise waiting to be picked up at our hotel.

We both brought underwater cameras (though Travis' was in a case that could go down deeper than mine could) so we were able to capture pictures while diving with his camera and while snorkeling with mine. Here's a glimpse into some of the things we encountered:

The lead line to take us to the bottom of the ocean.

This fish was literally this blue.

This was a little cave/divide kind of thing in the coral. I wanted to explore it and try to swim through it on my snorkel but I was too buoyant to stay down long enough.

Who knew they came in blue?

Blue starfish

Giant clam

Shark :)

Pancakes

We found this gigantic fish on our snorkel. He was quite flirty and kept swimming over the divers. He isn't quite as big as this picture shows in comparison to the divers but he was still pretty huge.

Stingray

 In the interest of keeping with my tradition of being clumsy when I travel, I decided to earn these bruises on our dive boat. What can I say, the water was really choppy, the boat was really knockin, and I have the balance of a toddler. They ended up spreading to the sides of my leg and got much darker on both legs before it was all said and done. Battle scars.

Next stop: Uluru and the great Australian Outback!

** Photo credit: Sarah-Jane Cruz and Travis Simnitt **