February 8, 2020 – Snorkeling and Scuba Diving in the Great Barrier Reef

From hot to hot – that’s what the itinerary called for. After leaving Port Douglas, our little shuttle bus took us down the coast to the bigger city of Cairns, where we’d stay the next two nights. It was still early in the day, but the temperature was already well over eighty degrees and humidity was at about 75%. We took refuge in our cute little rental cottage, lounging about with the chickens in the backyard.

When hunger finally got the best of us, we set off for a long, slow walk to the city center along the beach. The tide was looooooowwww and the water line was out of sight. No swimming for us, though, again, swimming in Cairns is not allowed due to those mighty saltwater crocodiles.

We took our time and relaxed in the breeze, oohing and aahhing at all the interesting beach birds and thousands of little black crabs. No croc sightings, though.

We popped into a beach-side restaurant for some fish tacos, a smoothie, and a chicken burger, and then we napped in the shade. That heat really takes it out of you, man. Just check out the UV index meter the city put up!

When we finally reached the city center, we were shocked to find a giant public pool out in the open. And there we were, stranded without swimsuits. We wandered into the Cairns art gallery just before closing to relish in the AC, or air-con, as they call it here.

Then we got into a bit of a riff over whether we should trek back for our swimsuits or buy new ones at a shop nearby, and we eventually decided to run back home. When we made it back to the saltwater pool, it was well past sunset, but still hot as can be. The water was a welcome refresher.

When we got home, I was startled by a cute little lizard hanging out above the toilet!

Day two in Cairns started out with some yummy, yummy, yummy passion fruit yogurt left for us by our lovely Airbnb host. She also left muesli, but that had been taken over by a colony of tiny ants…. Whoops.

And then it was off to the Great Barrier Reef! So excited!

After a safety talk from one of the dive leaders and a marine wildlife talk from the on-board marine biologist, it was time to don our “stinger suits” to help protect us from the jelly fish in the water. Apparently summer is “stinger season.”

Stop one was amaaaaazzzzziiiinnngggg. It was a bit hard to keep track of Jonathan because we were all wearing the same blue suits, but it was made a little easier by the fact that he’d been given a really faded one. It also had blood stains around the left shoulder, but…. Oh well! Bahahaha.

We snorkeled around together, pointing out a school of hundreds of tiny fish, large, colorful parrot fish, and pretty colored fish. I loved following the parrot fish and holding my breath so I could hear them chomping on the coral.

The coral was also amazing! There seemed to be a much wider variety of corals and other plant life here compared to Hanauma Bay in Hawaii. My favorite were these ginormous clam shells that had beautiful colored patterns showing in the area of the clamshell opening.

On the boat, we had been sitting near a couple who were frequent divers, and while we were out in the water, I heard one of them say something about a shark. We kicked over to their area, and sure enough, a grey nerf shark lay on the shallow ocean floor just below us! We watched for a minute or two, and then it wriggled its way out from under the coral and swam quickly away! There was no keeping up with this guy. He was fast!

At one point, I lost sight of Jonathan, but I told myself we could reconvene when we needed to head back to the boat. Turns out he was admiring the same large school of giant fish that I was – they were big grey fish about 12-18 inches long, and they were all over the place! It was very cool.

Soon enough, we heard the whistle blow from the ship, and it was time for us to return to our group to commence our scuba dive! The boat offered something called a “resort dive” which is possible to do with no prior scuba experience or certifications. We thought it sounded like a great opportunity – scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef? Does it get much cooler than that?

The reason these dives don’t require the days-long scuba certifications is that we aren’t actually responsible for any of our own safety features. We sat on the back edge of the boat while crew members dressed us and checked our tanks and equipment. Then our dive leaders took us one by one (we were a group of four) and had us demonstrate our important skills. The first of these was to equalize our ears by plugging our nose and blowing. The second was to clear our mask of water by tipping our head back gently pressing on the brow of the mask, and blowing our forcefully through our nose. I thought this one was the scariest, because you had to expose your nose to the water. The third was to take the regulator out of our mouth, blow tiny bubbles from our mouth, replace the regulator, and then clear the regulator of water by blowing out with a “TZUUUH!” before breathing in again.

It was all fine and dandy, and I was pretty excited, until it was my turn to go under water. I demonstrated all my skills just fine, but I still had a lot of water in my mask. I tried to clear it several times, and on the third or fourth try, I accidentally got some water in my nose as I let the mask back down. I was only about four feet underwater at this point, clinging to a rail below the boat with my two other group members, but this incident sufficiently freaked me out. As we waited for Jonathan to demonstrate his skills up above, I focused on not having a panic attack. My two other group members have me the oh-kay symbol to ask if I was good, and I lied back with the same hand gesture. (Thumbs-up are not allowed in diving, as this means, “Let’s go up,” same as a thumbs down means, “Let’s go further down.” Shaking your outstretched five-hand meant, “problem,” and I was doing my best to avoid making that gesture.

But I was seriously freaking out. The surface was still so close, but I was still so underwater, and breathing down there took so much concentration. I was doing everything I could to pretend (to myself as much as to my group members) that I was okay. The whole time we waited for Jonathan, I was considering whether I should tap out and go back to snorkeling. I REALLY did not like it down there. But when Jonathan came down, I told myself I would be okay and that it was only twenty minutes.

Our instructor checked in with all of us, somehow smiling through her snorkel gear, and then we all linked elbows with her in the middle. She told me to clear my mask again, because yeah, I did have a lot of water in there, so I did it again. Before we knew it, we were descending, further and further, and I was frantically popping my ears every five seconds. I was also a bit freaked out by my mask, and my regulator seemed to be pulling on the side of my mouth, so I basically always had my right hand holding both my mask and my regulator in place. This also allowed for easy nose-grabbing access for further ear popping.

Every once in a while, the instructor would reach over and push down on my head or back a bit, and she kept doing some hand signals I didn’t actually understand. It was all very confusing, and it didn’t make me any less alarmed. I realized later that this was her adjusting the air in my vest so we could descend further under water. But every time I had to pop my ears, I though to myself, “Haven’t we gone far enough?!”

So… Yeah. I’m really not dramatizing this at all. I was very terrified and was having absolutely no fun for the first ten minutes of this dive. I was simply spending my time trying to keep my head under control, fussing over my ears, and wishing we would head back soon. I didn’t even have the brain power to actually look at the fish and plant life around us. Here’s me looking my absolute most-thrilled at the beginning of the dive. I really was not in the mood, mister dive photographer!

You can also see that I’m waaaaay out of formation. We were all supposed to be linked tightly together, but poor Jonathan spent the whole dive being pulled up on the right side by my reluctant self.

I also really had to pee the whole time, but I did not dare pee for fear of having one more thing to think about.

Finally, miraculously, I somehow managed to calm down and look around us. (To be honest, we were in a fairly shallow area, so we weren’t actually exposed to anything more interesting than we could see from the surface while snorkeling. So that was a bit of a bummer.) But, nonetheless, I wasn’t in panic mode any more, so the whole thing was ever so slightly more enjoyable after this mental shift. When the photographer returned, I even had the gall to pose with The Boy for a picture.

I’m kind of smiling, see? Poor Jonathan’s goggles were fogging pretty badly, and I think the pressure was getting to him a bit by this point…. More on that later.

Finally, before I knew it, we were somehow at the boat again. I honestly hadn’t even noticed we were ascending. I had just been blindly following the group the whole time, but I was so grateful to be back. I did my best not to rush, but when I popped out of the water, a huuuuge gush of relief washed in.

As we fumbled about, taking turns getting out of the water, I leaned in to hear a conversation between the cheery dive instructor and one of my group members. I overheard her praising him and saying, “It’s only about one in a hundred that I can convince to stay under if they want to come up, so good on you, really!” Say whaaaaaat?! I guess I wasn’t the only one who wanted out! Apparently, he was having problems with his mask while we were underwater, and he gave her the daunting “problem” signal mixed with the emergency “up” signal. I have no idea how she convinced him to stay, but wow.

The crew asked if I had fun, and I revealed I was actually pretty freaked out, but they patted me on the back for sticking to it. And then it was back to the water, in a much more familiar environment.

After a little while, Jonathan told me he was actually feeling a little bit sick, so he headed back to the boat. Poor thing….

I wanted to stay out as long as I could, because there’s no telling how long it will be before I can snorkel again in a reef filled with this much life!

The time seemed to go on and on, and I kept wondering when they would call us back to the boat. I wasn’t complaining, though. There was still so much to see.

I was finally thinking that I would head closer to the boat to be ready when they called us back, when I did a little 360 to survey my immediate surroundings.

And then, to my utter shock, around the 120 mark of my rotation, I SAW A SEA TURTLE!!!!!!!!!!

I exclaimed a bit through my mouthpiece, and my eyes grew wide. The marine biologist had warned us, though, that if we found one, we should not swim quickly to it, for that would only scare it away. I did my best to restrain myself while also getting closer to this majestic creature.

I WAS WITHIN TWO FEET OF THE TURTLE, MOM. IT WAS INSANE.

He was so happy and smiley, so calm and in his element, and I was smiling just as much trying to keep pace with him. At one point, I was almost directly on top of him, and I had to back off a bit.

I had been having a problem all day with my mouth piece where water would get in and start to gurgle when I breathed. The water never made it to my mouth, but it still freaked me out and required me to shift upright, out of the water, to empty it. Well, while I was following Mr. Turtle, this happened ever more frequently because I was swimming and breathing faster, working hard to keep up with this master of the sea. Apparently they can swim up to 40 kilometers per hour! Thank goodness he wasn’t, but it was still a bit of work.

It was so peaceful, though. I was just thinking that I could probably follow him all day long and never get tired, and it wouldn’t even matter if the boat left me, but then I heard the whistle. Ugh.

I surfaced for a moment and saw that I was actually reeeeally far from the boat. Oops. Mr. Turtle had taken me a bit off course. But I didn’t want to leave him!!! Ugh.

I dipped my head under one more time to wish my turtle friend farewell, took a few mental pictures, and then I ripped off the band-aid and immediately began swimming in the opposite direction, back toward the boat.

Remember how I was just thinking I could keep this up forever? Yeah. That was before I got tired. As I made my way to the boat, unmotivated by a turtle wonder but motivated by the fear of getting in trouble with the boat crew, a different kind of aura fell over me that was the opposite of the cal. I’d felt only a minute before. My mouthpiece kept filling with water, and every time I came up to empty it, I noticed my breathing was more harried and closer to hyperventilation than the last.

And I was still so far from the boat.

There were three signals we were taught that would allow us to communicate with the lookouts while we were out in the sea. The first was to make a giant “O” with both arms overhead. This meant we were okay. The second was to flail and shout loudly. This meant we were drowning. Pretty straight forward. If we needed help, but it was not an emergency, we were to hold one arm straight up in the air with a fist. I told myself I did not need this signal, and that I could make it back to the boat just fine if given enough time, but after one more of those frantic mouthpiece emptying procedures, I saw how very far away the boat still was, and I thrust my arm in the air.

I didn’t see any signals in return, so I had no idea if anybody had actually seen me, but I continued on toward the boat. I was calming down a bit, falling into a rhythm, and I thought I would actually make it back just fine, but boy was I relieved when a swarthy, shirtless crew member greeted me with a life raft and told me, “Just keep kicking, okay?” I responded with a breathless, “Yeah,” and then I put my face back underwater.

When we reached the boat, I found I was the last one on and lunch was well underway. Surprisingly, nobody made any fuss about my rescue, though I made sure to thank my savior something like three times. Jonathan said he’d actually seen several other rescues happen, so I guess it’s just not that uncommon.

Lunch was a mix of flavorless meats and delightful salads. The Boy tuckered out quickly after eating.

Such a cutie.

Before long, though, we were at our second location, and we had no chance to rest because we’d signed up for a tour led by the marine biologist. It was only us and one other girl, so no dilly dallying. The girl opted for a pool noodle as some extra flotation, so I did the same, memories of my rescue still fresh in my mind.

Right away, we saw a tiny baby cuttlefish! It was about three inches long and it was bright yellow, but after we saw it, it turned blue and I lost track of the cute little thing! Very neat!

Then the guide brought us way off to….. The drop off.

Dun… dun…. DUUUUUUNNNNN!

Remember the beginning of Finding Nemo where the coral just ends, and all you can see is a great blue nothingness beyond and below? That’s what happened here. It was crazy! Very surreal and very scary. The next thing we knew, a giant bump-head parrot fish came swimming up to us out of the murky depths. He was huge – nearly three feet long and so smiley. This kind of parrot fish is a muted grey rather than a pretty neon, but he was cute nonetheless. I was trying to get him to come to me when the guide beckoned me over. I huffed as I reluctantly followed, but then, lo and behold, a school of them! Twenty or thirty giants! So cool!

The guide also pointed out a little baby stingray on the ocean floor, and he did a free dive down to it so that it would swim away and we could see its movement.

There were also many of these long, skinny needle-like fish that were called crocodile something-or-others. These floated only inches from the water’s surface, so they were easy to miss since we were always looking below us.

There were also tons of jelly fish at this location. Some were the size of my hand, and I scurried away from those as fast as possible. Some were the size of a fingernail, and from these, too, I scurried. I encountered one of these small ones that had tiny little fringes all the way around it, and each fringe was topped with a tiny red ball at the end, like a fancy lamp shade. I think there were plenty of even smaller jellies, though, because I kept feeling a sharp burning sensation in my calves, despite my stinger suit, and I’m pretty sure I was being stung. I kept having to hold my calves to try to mask the pain.

Soon enough, our guided tour was over. Jonathan seemed to be having trouble with his mask, and I wondered if he was still sick from the diving. As we neared the boat, I noticed a bunch of stuff around us, and I was just about to point it out to him when it donned on me that this was not some natural marine phenomenon. I quickly yanked my head from the water and looked over to him. “You okay?” I asked, already knowing the answer, and he responded with a meek, “No…”

I passed him my pool noodle and got to the boat. Poor baby. ): He somehow still managed to pose for this picture immediately after, and I resisted the urge to smack at the photographer.

The Boy was done in the water after that. He boarded the boat and got some fresh drinking water, and I made my way back out one last time. I told myself to stick with other swimmers this time and to stay close to the boat so as to avoid another rescue. Luckily, there was plenty near the boat to see! I mostly hung around with three different schools of fish. One was made up of a thousand tiny fish. Another was made of another variety of the foot-long grey guys, and the third was made of foot-long red guys. The red ones were my favorite. None of these schools were moving much, so I just kind of hung around in the middle of them, giddily saying to myself, “I am a fish.” I was rather tickled by the idea.

The whistle came soon enough, and it was back to the boat. You really would never imagine all that wonder exists just below the surface. What a magical place.

We were given glasses of wine for the return to shore, and Jonathan passed out before he could get his.

The rest of our evening was rather tame in comparison to our day at sea. I got an avocado smoothie (not bad), and we got some sushi for dinner, which I am only now realizing is a bit strange after pretending I was a fish for the better part of the day.

The real wildness came when we visited the Cairns City Library. There’s a giant tree right out front that houses a massive bat colony. The day before, we had noticed them hanging around in the daylight. They looked like strange, giant black fruit hanging from the tree. But as we approached the area just as the sun was setting, the sky was in uproar. Seriously. The bats were in a complete frenzy. Literally thousands of them were wheeling in the air, screeching and calling, creating a vortex around their tree and then flapping off into the horizon towards the rainforest where they would find themselves some dinner. It was insane! We watched for about ten minutes, and even then, they didn’t slow down! I’ve never seen anything like it!

Apparently the city has been trying for years to relocate the bats, with no luck so far. They’ve even tried this horrific sound machine that sends pointed audio to the bats of sirens, gunshots, and a cacophony of other terrible noises to try to scare the bats out of their home. No luck with that either.

Some 20,000 of these mega-bats dropped dead this time last year in Cairns due to a massive heat wave. These not-so-little guys just can’t catch a break. Hopefully they can get their home and future sorted out soon enough, because they really are something.

The Boy wanted to get a bottle of wine to celebrate our last night with a two-bedroom house all to ourselves, but within minutes of finishing my first glass, I fell asleep, the lights still on and my wet hair still wrapped in a towel.

In the morning, I hung out with the chickens one last time, and we did our best to clean out the fridge.