June 11th
We arrived in Cairns around 9AM to one of the nicest hostels we have ever stayed at. It is called Traveler’s Oasis. Immediately, we received warm hospitality, a really nice room, and it was a block from Cairns Central-the mall! After arriving, Pedro and I walked around the city to explore and found it was amazing..lots of shops everywhere(mostly dive shops), restaurants, and beautiful water! We went to our dive shop and picked up our information for our class to start tomorrow and went and got a physical from the doctor.
The physical was very interesting for me. The doctors in Queensland are very strict and almost failed me because I had taken Sudafed the day before to relieve congestion and my back surgery. They told me that in Queensland, they don’t release anyone with back surgery, blah blah. After talking with several divers, I found out that it is ok to dive after back surgery if you are after 1 year or so. I decided to take the chance.
After our physical , Pedro and I had dinner at a nice restaurant along the Esplanade-an open area along the water with many restaurants. I tried what Australia is known for-a fish called Barramundi. It was delicious!
We returned back to our room to study up for class to start the next day.
June 12th
Open water dive class training started this morning at 8:30AM. There were about 15 of us in the class, 2 dive instructors. Both of the instructors were awesome! They were so enthusiastic and fun! We started off with a few hours or classroom, then into the water we went. It was definitely strange the first time going underwater with a regulator. At first, I really didn’t think this sport was for me. We continued to do some training in the pool for a few hours. By the end of the training, we all knew how to breathe under water and do some safety skills. At the end of the day, we were definitely exhausted and had dinner and went straight to bed for another early start.
June 13th
Day 2 Open water dive class. We started off in the pool to do some more fun safety skills. I have to say I hated the mask removal one! It’s awful! After a few hours in the pool, we went back to the classroom to finish up our studies and take our final exam. We all passed our final exam!! After the training, we went to this class called “Reef Teach”. It’s a 2 hour lecture of various things that you are going to see in the Reef to prepare you before you go out diving. It was very interesting and exciting! We had some dinner and went back to get ready for a 3 day dive trip to the Great Barrier Reef!
June 14th
Pickup time was 6:15AM. We all made our way to the dive shop to pick our equipment and head to the boat. When we arrived on the boat, we were introduced to the Dive Master, the skipper, the other instructors, and the chef! (yes, we had a real chef on board—you wouldn’t believe what we ate—all we did was dive, eat, dive, eat—and awesome meals too!!) We were all informed that it would be a bit choppy and to be prepared. Little did we know that a “bit” choppy means VERY VERY VERY CHOPPY!! The boat ride was about 3 hours out to the reef site, and yep, it was rough! I went down to my cabin to relax a bit and came back up an hour later to find half the boat at the back with “seasick bags” in their hands! Luckily, Pedro and I didn’t get sick at all through the whole trip. After 3 hours of rough riding, we got to the Great Barrier Reef. And, I will have to say, we were upset because the weather was awful. The sun was gone, it was raining, windy, the waves were so high…I was thinking, no way am I jumping in there! But, we did because we had to!! We had our first training dive in the ocean to about 10 meters where we had to repeat all of our fun skills again (mask removal, buddy breathing, etc). In the afternoon, we had our second training dive where again more skills and a little swim to look at things. In between dives, we ate like pigs-pasta, chocolate cake, and much more. The night came and we all gathered around in the boat and played card games, talked, etc. I came to learn about everyone’s cultures. I still found it again amazing how many people just take off a year to do backpacking and a little working all around the country. It really is amazing that people do this. I really could stay in Australia for another few months..there is so much to see. After a delicious dessert, we went to bed pretty early as we had an early start for another training dive at 6AM.
June 15th
We woke up to another ugly, gloomy, rough weather day. I kept thinking..where is this paradise everyone brags about for the Great Barrier Reef? We still had to do more training dives, so we jumped in the water. I tell you it is hard to swim at the surface with all the dive equipment on when the waves are beating you up! Once we got under, it calmed down a bit. This dive was our deepest one to 18 meters. This dive we mostly just swam around a bit and did some surface skills. It was really beautiful! We saw turtles and lots of fish and the coral reefs were amazing! After this dive, we had one more dive with some more training skills to get our official certification. We finished the skills with success and were official PADI certified divers! YAY!!
We finally could swim without an instructor! So, in the afternoon, we did our first dive alone together..and...the sun even came out for 10 mins and the water calmed down a little!!! We went swimming for about 40 mins around 10 meters and saw the most beautiful fish and barracudas, turtles, and more! It was amazing!!! It is really another world under the water! On our way up of this dive, unfortunately, I had a really hard time getting my ears to equalize and I ended up getting a “negative block,”as they call it. This was very painful and it wouldn’t go away, so unfortunately, I missed out on the night dive and the next early morning dive. Pedro since he joined the Adventure Training group did the night dive, which to me looked soooo scary! The water was rough, it was dark and you couldn’t see anything! Some of the other divers in the group said they saw a shark, and this special kind of fish(I cant remember the name)-that makes a sleeping bag for it out of its own mucus for the night. Pedro said it was lots of fun, but a little freaky!
June 16th-17th
We woke up this time to a beautiful morning! Finally the sun is out---well..partially, some clouds, and a little bit of waves. Let’s just say that this day was beautiful compared to the others!!! Pedro and his Adventure gang started their first dive at 6AM to 30 meters. If you are not familiar with diving, at this depth, you get what’s called narcosis—in other words, you start feeling “happy/high”. They had to do several skills down there to see if they were "narked up" as they call it. Also, Interestingly, if you bring a soda can down there and pour it out, you will get to drink just the syrup from the soda! Pedro said it was an awesome dive and he really enjoyed it! I woke up hoping my ear would feel better, but unfortunately it didn’t, and the instructors told to wait out the first dive of the day. I decided that I was going to join in on the last dive of the day since I did feel a little better with my ears.
Pedro and I went on our last dive together, and it was spectacular! It was really the best dive we had! We stayed about 5-10 meters so we could stay down longer and enjoy the reef. We saw all kinds of beautiful fish, coral, etc! With the sun shining this time, the colors of the reef really came out! We even saw Nemo! After our last dive, we returned to clean up our equipment and grab some lunch and get ready for the long and bumpy ride home. We took a nap (well tried to….although it was rather bumpy-lets just say I had to hold myself in the bed!) on the way home.
I have to say that scuba diving is absolutely amazing! At first, I really didn’t think it was for me and it was pretty scary, but after sticking with it, I felt so much more comfortable under the water and it really is amazing the things that you can see! I can't wait to go diving again back home!
We arrived back in Cairns around 3PM and checked in our hotel, The Shangri-La Marina Cairns for the conference to start tomorrow.
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