Venture to Australia: Trip to Cairns – Day 1: The Great Barrier Reef

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Trip to Cairns – Day 1: The Great Barrier Reef

We woke up early for our trip out to Green Island and the Great Barrier Reef. A continental breakfast was provided by the hotel and served on the verandah. The morning was quite pleasant and not too hot; the sun rises early so it was well in the sky by 7:00am.

We waited just outside the hotel for our pickup shuttle sent by the touring agency, they sent a coach bus to pick us up; we were the first to get on. We sat at the front of the bus and enjoyed the ride to the docks. Five minutes later we arrived at the docks, I felt kind of silly being chauffeured by a huge coach bus to a location that was within walking distance of the hotel but oh well. :)

One of the first things you'll notice when you get to Cairns (as long as you don't arrive in the middle of the night like we did) is the mountains. They're incredible, not mountains of rock but mountains covered in lush greenery; completely covered in trees. The bases of the mountains seem to dive right into the edge of the water.

We traveled for about an hour on a large (air conditioned) boat to get to Green Island. When we got to the island we had a choice of several activities including a glass bottom boat tour of the reef, snorkeling or something they called a "water walk" in which people wear suits and go on a walking tour of the floor of the ocean; we chose snorkeling. As part of the tour package we were provided with snorkeling gear.

The rest of the day we were pretty much free to explore the reef at our leisure. The island wasn't too crowded and everyone seemed to be doing something different. Some chose to simply lie on the beach or play in the water but I can't imagine why a person would go all the way out to the Great Barrier Reef just to treat the island like any old beach.

The water itself wasn't too deep, and an adult (even a short one like me!) could stand in most places. We were asked not to stand on the actual reef but to look for sandy patches before setting down. There were lots of fish everywhere and Craig and I made good use of our disposable cameras to try and take a shot of everything that looked interesting.

After a few hours of snorkeling it was back to the boat for a light buffet lunch included in the cost of our tour. It was then back out again to do some more reef snorkeling, this time to a new location that Craig had spotted that seemed to be attracting a lot of attention.

We swam closer to the docks this time and Craig noticed that large amounts of fish were gathered underneath it. We later learned that this was probably due to the fact that as the boats leave the dock they often do a "fish feeding". The fish didn't seem to pay any attention to the fact that people were swimming amongst them. In fact one little fishy had the audacity to swim right up to both Craig and me and swirl about in all directions.

After a long day of snorkeling we were back on the boat again for the trip back to Cairns and the short trip back to our hotel. Just as we were leaving it started to rain and once on the boat it actually started to pour. But that didn't stop the tour people from doing their daily "fish feeding" in which they threw pieces of fish food (I'm not exactly sure what) over the back of the boat and the fish literally jumped out of the water for it.