They don't call it "Great" for nothing.

The whole point of including Australia on my itinerary was so that I could dive at the Great Barrier Reef.  I signed up for a 3 day live-aboard trip with Pro-Dive that departed for Cairns.  Now after all of the planning and almost a month of traveling I was ready for the trip.

My SCUBA diving experience really started the day before the trip when I stopped by the store to be fitted for my gear- wetsuit, mask, fins, etc.   Maybe someone will disagree with me, but I've never worn a wetsuit that was comfortable to get off and on.  If they exist, please let me know.  This particulary suit fit fine except it was tight on my shoulders.  We decided that was as good of a fit as possible and I headed back to the dressing room to take it off.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get it off.  The wetsuit was full-legged, short-sleeved with a zipper all the way up the front from the waist.  No matter how I contorted my shoulders or body there was no way to get the thing off by myself.  I was jumping and squirming and sweating in the dressing room until finally after about 5 painful minutes I gave up and had to sheepishly ask the man helping me fit my gear to come in and get it off of me.  Not so bad when you are wearing a swimsuit, a little more embarrassing when you are wearing a bra.  He respectfully looked away.  This was certainly a sign of how much I would love this wetsuit by the end of the trip, espiecially when I had to put it on and take it off about 11 times in 48 hours.

The trip officially started with a 6am pickup, shuttle to the dock and then we were aboard heading out to the reef (about 3 hours).  Unfortunately we were told there was a high-wind advisory in effect for our entire trip.  Since the GBR is somewhat sheltered this would most affect us on the trip out and back, but we were warned that we wouldn't see any smooth sea.  I didn't think this was a particulary big deal since I've never had problems with motion sickness.

Our group involved 32 divers and 5 crewmembers. The first hour of the trip everyone was a little groggy and kinda quiet.  That didn't last long.  After a very rough ride out to sea we were ready for our first dive.  To give you a little background on my SCUBA experience, I had exactly 4 dives under my belt (the minimum required number) and they were all done in a 50 degree quarry with about 5-10ft of visibility and an instructor within reach at all times.  Suddenly here I was on the GBR with a lot of folks who knew what they were doing and I didn't have a clue.  I was paired up with a great girl from Canada who had just learned to dive as well although she had 5 dives to my 4.  We went to our dive briefing with a little map to memorize including compass coordinates, and depth and time limits.   Looking back it was a very simple plan but at the moment I was just clueless.  I could remember is I had an 18 meter limit or 8 meter, if the compass coordinate was 180 out or 180 back?  For some reason I also though the features identified on the crude drawing would be the only ones we'd see underwater.   Gwen was nearly as clueless as me.

We put on our gear in a a daze.  Tried to remember everything we'd ever learned before and jumped off the boat.  On my first attempt I couldn't even get under water, but kept floating back to the top.  Turns out it's pretty difficult to sink unless you are calm.  I was not really all that clam.  Second attempt we get down and promptly read out compasses wrong heading off in the exact wrong direction.  Luckily there is more underwater than just what is on the map and we still saw interesting stuff.  Honestly, I don't remember it.  I was so worried about breathing and getting comfortable that I really didn't think about looking around.  Somehow we managed to find our way back to the boat (we cheated and came to the surface for a peek).

Luckily, we got more and more comfortable with each dive (at the end of the first half-day of diving I had doubled my total number of dives!), although I fear our navigation skills never excelled.    Inevitably if we were told during the briefing that on this particular dive "it was impossible to get lost" then we would.  At one point we did a wall dive that consisted of swimming along a wall and then swimming back to the boat.  It doesn't get any easier then this.  Only problem was the wall was parallel to the boat and we swam directly perpendicular- probably should have looked a little closer at the map.  We did manage to find our way back to the boat without cheating a few times and there was much celebration.  It was actually comforting that neither of us had a clue what we were doing since it's never fun to be the weak, clueless link.

As for the reef itself, I admit that I was initially disappointed.  I was picturing National Geographic quality super bright colors and to be honest a lot of the actual coral reef in the area we were is dead or destroyed from divers and pollution.  The Nat. Geo. reef is apparently in the far north where there is less human influence.  After I got over the initial reaction, though, it was pretty amazing.  We saw big sea turtles, reef sharks (about 5 ft at most), giant clams (over 5 ft long), a lot of different corals, sea fans, cabbages, sea sponges, potato cod, clown fish, parrot fish, and tons of other fish that I could identify but I don't know their names (where is Blake when I need him!).  The coolest individual fish we saw was a lionfish and my favorite thing was seeing school of bumphead parrotfish.  The largest of these fish were maybe 5-6ft and there were these large schools of them just hanging out in the water.  So cool to be swimming around with them.  Also the turtles let you swim pretty close to them and they are just neat creatures.

Really I could have been happy just staring at the large number of tiny fish that live in a single anenome (sp?) or the giant clams and sponges.  I got comfortable enough with my diving to get pretty close to things to check them out and there was always something interesting to look at.

Our trip also included two night dives which were a bit crazy.  The first night out the three of us that had no night-diving experience went out with the dive master and basically followed him around.  It was fascinating just to be underwater at night.  Scary but we felt secure being down with Tristan.  The second night we were on our own and it was awesome and terrifying.  When we jumped into the water the skipper was throwing bits of bread into the water.  There were always decent sized fish and at night a few sharks around the boat anyway and I wasn't sure what the deal with the bread was.  I soon figured it out.  At the moment I first put my head into the water a large (maybe 2 feet) fish was flying at my face to get a bread crumb that was directly in front of my mask.  Talk about a shock.  I screamed and then starting cracking up, both of which the crew enjoyed.  On night dives, you have only a small flashlight and so you focus only on what it is pointed at.  This attention to detail is a whole different perspective, but it's also very easy to think about everything else out there and get overwhelmed that you might run into a reef or get lost.  It's an interesting feeling of claustrophobia which has never affected me in small spaces but I got a tinge of it in the giant ocean.  Strange, huh?   Coming back to the boat is pretty funny.  In all the movies they always depict the alien mothership as this green ship in the sky that you float up to and this is exactly what you do.  As they promised us, it is impossible to get lost in a night dive, the glow of the boat is pretty obvious and even with our horrible navigation skills we had no problems.

Beyond the diving, I also couldn't have enjoyed the company more.   The crew was awesome and so were my fellow divers.  A little group of 5-8 of us spent so much time laughing that the dive masters starting wondering what was in our tank.  The whole group found it hysterical that I learned to dive in a quarry and that the instructors had taught me all the hand signals for various marine life that I certainly wasn't going to see in the quarry.  This led to a very intricate system of hand signals that including cowboys, indians, snakes, jellies, turtles, and various other terms that never failed to crack us up.

My biggest problem on the boat was that I found sleeping to be a challenge.  The wind and waves kept the boat in a constant rock and I was in the top bunk on the top deck.  Part of me always felt like I was about to roll out of the bunk and as a result I didn't sleep more than a few hours either night.  Getting up to dive at dawn didn't help the sleep deprivation.   I made the mistake of trying to take a nap on the trip back in and had my first touch of motion sickness.  The trip back across the open water was very rough, even the crew admitted.  The boat was pitching pretty badly and anything that wasn't strapped down was rolling around.   Being in my little tiny room was not a good place to be during the commotion (reading "The Perfect Storm" just prior to getting on the boat was also a bad idea).  I finally made it out back on the deck and managed to survive the trip with only an unsettled stomach.

When we got back the crew warned us that we would feel unstable on land for a day or so and that it might be particulary bad in the shower or at night while sleeping.   For anyone who as every had too much to drink and gotten the spins, they can identify with this feeling.   We tried to reason that drinking would cancel out the boat spinning but sadly this logic did not apply.  I spent one more evening unable to sleep since every time I closed my eyes the room rocked and every time I feel asleep I dreamed on being in the water or on the rocking boat.  Who knew that the worst case of motion sickness I have ever experienced would be in a bedroom on dry land.  Basically I was so tired I kept falling asleep but being asleep made me want to throw up.  Repeat. Repeat.  Not pleasant.   Coincidentally, my personality after three days without sleep is not pleasant either.

Finally I'm getting back to normal, but all of the bruises are now starting to appear.  For those of you who know me well, you know I can't walk on dry land that isn't moving.  You should have seen me on the boat.  The very first day I face-planted into a bench and that pretty much set the tone.  One day I walked into the bathroom and had the bad timing of trying to close the door right when the boat pitched in the same direction.  I went flying and bashed my forehead into the door, leaving a nice little mark.  Good times all around =)