Day 301: Stormy Weather

I got up early, stored most of my things in the hostel luggage room, and headed to the harbor to board the small ship I was heading out to sea with for 2 days at part of the Great Barrier Reef. It was a pretty small group, with just 8 travellers and 4 crew. Because they were having trouble selling space on the boat due to a cyclone warning and a week of constant rain I had got a substantial discount on the cost, and then also got a free upgrade to have the only private room on the ship since it was available and I was travelling alone. The first day at sea, especially the first 4 or 5 hours, were pretty miserable. There was a lot of wind, and it was pouring rain so that no matter what you did you were going to end up getting cold and soaked. All the wind was also making the sea quite choppy and was making me feel pretty queasy. I don't normally get seasick, but I haven't been on small boats in choppy water much either. By the time we got to the first dive site I was pretty nauseous, but jumped into the water to do some snorkelling. It was a lot warmer in the water than on the boat, and as soon as I was floating in the water all my nausea went away and I was feeling great.

Through the day we stopped 4 times for dives. My package only included one introductory scuba dive, and doing extras was going to cost more money than I could afford with my dwindling funds. Even without diving, the snorkelling was still amazing. In many places the reef is so close to the surface that you have to take care not to kick it when you swim, and there are dozens, if not hundreds of types of colourful corals and fish everywhere. I don't know that much about tropical fish, but clown fish (aka Nemo fish now, apparently) were one distinctive type. We also saw a few sea turtles, a sting ray and some small sharks between the thousands of fish and plants.

Unfortunately my camera isn't an underwater one, and it cost a lot more than I wanted to spend to rent one ($30 per day to rent a camera) so I don't have any pictures. Really though, it's one of those things that thousands of other people have posted pictures of online.

By evening the weather had calmed down quite a bit, and I found getting to sleep at night quite easy.