Si's Year Out! (Plus Europe! Plus Morocco!): Port Douglas and SCUBA Diving!

On my way back to Port Douglas I went to a series of waterfalls called the Crystal Cascades. While I was walking up the hill I saw a HUGE lizard-type thing, which must have been about two meters long, just waddling along by the water!
I took a video of it that you can see here!

As I walked further up the river the waterfalls got bigger and bigger. Unfortunately, just as it looked like it was going to get really interesting, there was a big fence saying something like 'Cairns water supply, no access'. So I walked back down and jumped in at a swimming hole and slid down some rapids. The river was ice cold, crystal clear and full of fish and turtles.....very refreshing!

Got to Port Douglas in the afternoon. The place is a beautiful, upmarket, resort town (apparently Bill Clinton chills out here every so often), that has been used for a couple of films. Also, the guy who built the place apparently buggered off to Spain without paying any of the workers who built the entire town....

The next morning I got to the marina and waited to board the boat. I was praying that I wouldn't get sea-sick (I get really travel-sick, especially on boats). When I was younger I couldn't even make the Dover-Calais ferry crossing without throwing up.....hence the reason that I haven't really been on a boat for any length of time for about 12 years! Luckily, travel-sickness tablets have improved in the last 12 years and I just about made the 1hr 20min journey by sitting out on the front deck.

I'd paid for one introductory SCUBA dive, meaning that I could be taken down 12 meters maximum. I was in the first group to go and, after demonstrating the necessary 'skills' , I jumped in! We had to do two skills again under water. The first was clearing your mask of water, which involved looking up, holding the top of your mask, and breathing out through your nose. The second one was taking the mouthpiece out of your mouth and swapping it for the emergency one, then swapping back again. It was a bit weird to breathe under water at first but not to difficult. Another important thing to do was to equalise pressure by popping your ears, just like on a plane. Finally, you have you breathe steadily and deeply and never hold your breath (or your lungs could explode!).

After all that it was time to go down. We held onto a guide-rope and followed it down to the bottom. The first site was not particularly colourful, but had loads of fish. We also saw a shark, about two meters in length! Unlike the last time I saw a shark (while snorkeling), this one really did look like JAWS! All of a sudden it was already time to go up again, 30 minutes had passed like it was 5. The instructor (called Yuki) said I must be comfortable in the water because I didn't use much air at all :)

It was so amazing that I decided to do another dive at the next site! This time I could go straight down without doing any of the skills. The second site had the most amazing coral you could ever imagine! All different bright colours with lots of weird and wonderful fish swimming around. We also saw a couple of sea turtles, much bigger than I expected, that swam right up to us and let us touch them! This time Yuki took the other two people up and told me to wait, then she took me around for another 10 minutes because I had so much air left :)

I couldn't resist doing another dive at the third and final site....when am I ever gonna be on the Great Barrier Reef again! This time, when we got to the bottom, a gigantic black and white striped fish (much bigger than me) swam right up to us. Yuki held it under the chin (if fish have chins?!) and it just sat there while we touched it. This area of the reef had a pyramid of coral that stuck up out of the water and an unbelievable amount of fish. You could swim right through big schools of fish and they wouldn't even bother moving much! We saw trumpet fish, a batfish, a big clam and much more. You could put your hand inside the clam and it would snap closed, making it difficult to get it out again! Once again I got to stay down a bit longer cos I had loads of air left.

The sea-sickness tablets knocked my out on the way back (thankfully). I woke up just in time to get my certificate (yay!) and pay for my extra dives (boo!). Diving the Great Barrier Reef is probably the best thing I've done since I've been in Australia (and probably the most expensive!), can't wait to do it again one day!