The news of the Chilean earthquake as we wake next morning includes tsunami warnings for the whole of the east coast of Australia. This is the day we have planned to go diving. We could be in for an interesting day. Although we have another early start, our hotel is only a two minute walk from the Reef Fleet Terminal where we catch our boat. The Big Cat Green Island boats take you about an hour offshore to a small rainforest covered island in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef. It seems that the only consequence of the devastating events in Chile has been a 'King Tide' here. There are one or two minor floods in Cairns itself and almost no beach left to sit on once we reach Green Island as it's high tide, but things return pretty much to normal by 11:00am as the tide begins to go out. The boat provides a pretty good buffet lunch, drinks and snacks all day, a semi-submersible trip which gives a fabulous view of the reef's marine life, a glass-bottom boat and all the snorkeling gear you need. They even have prescription diving masks. In between activities there is all the reef diving and snorkeling you could want.
The water is so shallow and the reef so close to the surface that there is little point in going deep diving, so it'll just be snorkeling for me. However there are quite a few lethal jelly fish around at this time of year, whose sting will hospitalise you, if you get ashore quickly enough or kill you if you don't! So all the divers are given all-in-one Lycra body suits. Yes there is a photograph of yours truly in a blue full body Lycra suit! It will be published on the Internet, but on a subscription only web site. Negotiations with a Russian male porn site are ongoing!
The weather forecasts for this time of year are always the same. It is the wet summer season, so rain and thunder are always forecast. In Kuranda we had one small shower and after that the day was warm and sunny. For our reef exploration day it is hot and humid - very hot and very humid in fact. You feel a little like a cartoon character with a torso full of holes......as fast as you drink, the water just pours out of you. So it's much too hot to sit in the sun. The diving was good and the trip in the semi-submersible was a really unexpected highlight spotting turtles, stingrays, giant clams, and every conceivable type of fish and coral.
I hired an underwater camera whose contents have been given to me on a DVD. I think I have about 80 extremely poor photos and about 20 minutes of unwatchable video. I'm looking forward to seeing the depressing results when we get home.
All in all we've had another good day. Once back in the hotel, there's time for a quick shower and freshen up before we go down to the club room for drinks and appetisers. For dinner we wander out onto the Esplanade in Cairns and pick one of the hundreds of restaurant at random. An excellent supper. So much food, so little time, such limited tummy capacity!
Tomorrow brings another major highlight - lunch on our Qantas flight to Sydney. I wonder if their in-flight catering has continued to respond to my writings by making further progress........
......to be continued.
The water is so shallow and the reef so close to the surface that there is little point in going deep diving, so it'll just be snorkeling for me. However there are quite a few lethal jelly fish around at this time of year, whose sting will hospitalise you, if you get ashore quickly enough or kill you if you don't! So all the divers are given all-in-one Lycra body suits. Yes there is a photograph of yours truly in a blue full body Lycra suit! It will be published on the Internet, but on a subscription only web site. Negotiations with a Russian male porn site are ongoing!
The weather forecasts for this time of year are always the same. It is the wet summer season, so rain and thunder are always forecast. In Kuranda we had one small shower and after that the day was warm and sunny. For our reef exploration day it is hot and humid - very hot and very humid in fact. You feel a little like a cartoon character with a torso full of holes......as fast as you drink, the water just pours out of you. So it's much too hot to sit in the sun. The diving was good and the trip in the semi-submersible was a really unexpected highlight spotting turtles, stingrays, giant clams, and every conceivable type of fish and coral.
I hired an underwater camera whose contents have been given to me on a DVD. I think I have about 80 extremely poor photos and about 20 minutes of unwatchable video. I'm looking forward to seeing the depressing results when we get home.
All in all we've had another good day. Once back in the hotel, there's time for a quick shower and freshen up before we go down to the club room for drinks and appetisers. For dinner we wander out onto the Esplanade in Cairns and pick one of the hundreds of restaurant at random. An excellent supper. So much food, so little time, such limited tummy capacity!
Tomorrow brings another major highlight - lunch on our Qantas flight to Sydney. I wonder if their in-flight catering has continued to respond to my writings by making further progress........
......to be continued.
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