some more splashing to find Nemo

The treat I paid myself (which will surely be the last one for this trip) to keep me entertained for the weekend was a toy boat with which I have been playing around at the Lagoon in Cairns. Some people complained but as you can see, it's a fairly small boat:P

Honestly, this picture is not THAT convincing, who am I kidding?

I just spent 2 days aboard the Vagabond, a nice sailing ship with a faaab crew to check out the Great Barrier Reef. We dived in the morning, in the afternoon and the next morning. Simply put, we were all the tme in the water.

I didn't dive, "just" snorkeled but it was GREAT. The next time I'll be around (there will be a next time) I will make sure I have my diving certification and dive in this great reef again.

Besides Nemo and all his friends, I spotted 2 sharks and a turtle. Turtles look amazing, they were my main object of (spotting) desire during this trip.

I learned an important thing during this time, not to sleep at night in the hamac. It may look cool, it may be possible to sleep even, but it sways MUCH more than the boat itself. So me, not suffering from "the motion of the ocean" during the first day, had a more difficult morning. I was almost about to express myself to the ocean, but the spewing feeling passed, I ate and I was top fit in no time, ready to stay under water for another hour and half.

If you never snorkeled, don't think it's just about swimming on the surface of the water with the goggles, snorkel and fins on and spotting the fishes and other creatures from the distance! I dived aaaall the time, but of course not as deep as the divers, I cannot equalize and stay as long under water as they can. I spotted the turtle when I took a dive, waiter for a couple of seconds in the calm and there she came and swam around me and left.

I wish I had bought an underwater case for my cam:(

It all goes like this: jump in the water from the boat and start swimming in the direction of the reef. They can be spotted from the ship, as it's a shallow zone where the waves are different. While swimming and reaching the spot, a massive rock shows up in front of us, it's actualy the reef covered with corals where fishes swim around. If the swell is not too strong, swimming over the reef with 1-1.5m of water is good. In our case, it was not easy and I was even caught in the wave break once while swimming over the reef. Nothing happened, i just did not want to be pushed and pulled around by the ocean like a toy and possibly hit the corals. Once satisfied, just swim back to the boat.

The reef is protected, boats causing damage to them should report immediately to the authorities. Boats do not lay anchor, instead they hold to some ropes already planted there by companies who then sell authorizations to use these. These fixation points are tied to big concrete blocks normally in the middle of a sand bank.

The crew, a skipper, the cook/engineer (also the owner) and the diving instructor were fab! With them, we were 13 people, so a good family environment was easily built and we all chatted along our trips, our dives, etc...

It was a great experience. There is another boat offering a similar experience here in Cairns, I can only talk about this one and strongly recommend them. 220$AUD for this trip without diving. I even had vegetarian meals, the cook prepared them separately just for me. I felt pampered for a while:D

** UPDATE **

Thank god (or who/whatever) I did not get really sea sick. One poor girl had a 2-day journey through hell. The boat does not tumble over, but it felt like it sometimes. That girl spent the whole time with a terrible expression on her face, any "are you doing alright" question was pointless:(

It did not rain nor was it stormy. The current and the wind combined just helped the balancing around A LOT.

This is just my call of warning for whoever felt like this on a boat before and thinks it went away. I guess the solution would be to sleep every time the boat travels:P

We had in fact a FANTASTIC weather. I woke up at 2 in the morning or so from the hamac, stood up, looked around and saw everybody else sleeping on the deck:) The moonlight (almost fullmoon) was SMASHINGLY and beautifully reflected on the sea! No picture could ever pay it credit to the image, so there is NONE to show it:) Just imagine standing up a bit dizzy, looking to your left side of a slowly swinging boat and just freeze in awe...

** UPDATE END **

After a shower in the public toilets next to the Lagoon, I came online to check for my CS possibilities in Townsville and Bingo! Now I need to know where to go afterwards and see if I find other CSers.

If I don't give news in say... 2 weeks, it means that my hitch-hiking idea was not that great:P

Now I need to go to the hostel, have something to eat and rest. I only slept four hours before the boat trip, the pub crawl the night before was more enthusiastic than I expected:P More about that and Kuranda later on.

n.-