Great Barrier Reef

TODAY WAS SUCH A FANTASTIC DAY!!! I had booked a day excursion snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef, and I thought that I might do another day of "introductory" diving, but I have to say that today was SO GREAT, I'm not sure that I need to do another trip! The weather was perfect (after yucky weather the past few days -- overcast, rainy and super sticky), I saw tons of fish, giant clams about 3 feet across and two sea turtles, and I only got a little sunburned, which is perhaps the most wonderful part of all!


But I have a confession to make... I think I pictured the Great Barrier Reef as sort of an underwater Great Wall of Coral, but there were actually sandy patches in between the coral patches. Hm. Live and learn.

So anyway, I was picked up at 7:20 this morning for transport to the boat and we left around 7:45. The boat trip was about an hour before we got to the first stop where we could get in the water on the Reef. It was really amazing! I've done a little snorkeling before, but just the incredible quantity and variety of fish was amazing. Perhaps the most interesting (besides the sea turtles, of course!) was the flute fish -- thin and about 2 feet long. (As one of the boat crew guys pointed out, most things out there are named for what they look like!) The coral was also really neat -- so many different colors and shapes. My favorite was the finger coral with purple tips, almost like purple Christmas tree lights! There were also purple starfish all over the place, and many of the giant clams were purple inside.

After swimming around for a couple hours, we had lunch (not worth mentioning -- Amy was right, the food's not very good down here!) and then headed off to a different spot about a hundred yards or so off of an island that was only an island during low tide. It had long, sandy sloping beaches and was probably about 100 square feet -- seriously. Sometimes a wave would wash over the whole island. But there were coral patches around there also, so we had the chance to swim around for another couple hours before heading back.

[The photo is of the island. The darker blobs in the foreground are the coral patches. It was really neat how you'd be swimming along and see some coral up ahead, and as you got closer you'd realize that there were just hundreds of colorful fish all around it!]

I did get a little sunburned on my back, but I don't feel like it's nearly as bad as it could have been! I tried to be diligent about reapplying the sunscreen, but I was probably in the water for at least 45 minutes each time I went out snorkeling, so it's probably inevitable that I'd get a little burned. We'll see how I feel tomorrow!

Speaking of tomorrow, I'm taking the train up to Kuranda and the Skyrail back. More soon!