So we headed out to sea at 9am, and got to our first dive site about 11am. The two-hour ride wasn’t too good, and a few people were a bit green at this stage. This wasn’t helped by the scuba tuition that we’d had during the ride, which was inside, reading off a flip chart for an hour, whilst the boat was rocking around. Not an ideal combo!! Still, this is pretty essential as they tell you how to breathe under water, what to do if the mouth piece falls out or you get water in your mask, and how to “equalise” the pressure in your ears as you go down so your ear drums don’t implode (the pressure eases as you come up, so its not a problem then).
Lucky for us, we were the first group to go on the dive, so we could get into the water, and hopefully alleviate some queasiness!! We donned our wetsuits, and got into the water. The water wasn’t cold so probably didn’t need wetsuits, but as its coming into stinger season (stingers are nasty man-o-war type jellyfish who can kill if they sting you – they come down the Oz coast with the warm waters in the summer) so it’s better to be safe.
Our guide was a bit moody and not very sympathetic or patient with learner divers. Obviously, we haven’t done this before, and with a mouthpiece in, we can’t speak, and ask her what she’s trying to communicate. She got a bit stroppy with all of us at some stage, which tarnished the experience slightly. Still, as we went down, equalizing every meter or so, as you feel the pressure mount on your ears and chest, you begin to see life under water.
It was an amazing experience, and you have to concentrate on your breathing all the time, which is really weird as you do it so naturally above the water.
Once we got down to about 10 meters we managed to land on the sand and some of us managed to avoid damaging the reef – which was pretty much damaged already, as there was hardly any colour down here. We then got a visit from the “in-water” photographer who kindly gave us a gooey, slimy sea cucumber to hold.
Then out came the Auzzie flag and then we were moved over to a rock for another snap – it was only later when looking at the pictures that we found out that there was a little orange clown fish, more famously known as “Nemo”, just behind the rock!
Once all this was finished we then got the sign that we needed to resurface, and before we knew it we were bobbing up and down on the surface again.
Back on the boat we managed to escape our wetsuits, which felt just too tight and poor Ev got a revisit from her free Spag Bol…
After Ev’s episode we managed to get back in the water for some snorkeling – hoping that this would make her feel better, Ev joined Marc and we managed to have a reasonably good time and saw loads of fish, some coloured coral, and some parrot fish that you could actually hear crunching away at the coral! Funny how we managed to see more here than down below!
But just as we were starting to feel better Ev swallowed a huge gulp of sea water which just made her sick again and she then decided to call it a day and sit out front on the bow of the boat – where conveniently enough all the sickies were hanging out.
All in all, the overall experience was great but it also made us come to the decision of not paying a fortune to spend 5 days in order to get our PADI qualifications.
Once we were off the boat we got cleaned up and decided to try and get some dinner (paid for, not free spag bol ;) – this did us a world of good. Feeling much better Evelyn then convinced Marc to come with her to the night market and get a really cheap ($10 for 40 mins) Chinese body massage. This was just amazing after all the stress our bodies had to endure during the day.
We nicely rounded off our Cairns visit with some gourmet ice-cream, watching the flying-foxes amongst the trees on the espe.
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