Straight off the boat on Saturday evening and after a quick dinner with Kim, I picked up the overnight Greyhound bus from Airlie Beach to Cairns to embark on my learn to dive course. It would have been an 11 hour bus trip, if a lorry(semi) hadn’t jack-knifed across the road approx 3 hrs outside of Cairns – we had to wait 2 hrs for it to get light so that the bus driver could take an alternate route… the road was too narrow to attempt in the dark!
After dropping my bags off at the hotel, I was determined not to repeat my Sydney hotel lobby experience, so I headed straight out to find something to do for the day. I found the tourist information center and booked myself a day trip to Kuranda – traveling out by cable-car over the top of the rainforest and back down by scenic railway. The rainforest scenery was beautiful and couldn’t have been more of a contrast to my last few days in the ocean. I had a lot of fun trying to perfect self-portraits with my camera while I was traveling over the top of the rainforest in the cable car – hope no one saw me! Once in Kuranda I visited the Koala Sanctuary and hugged a Koala!
After dropping my bags off at the hotel, I was determined not to repeat my Sydney hotel lobby experience, so I headed straight out to find something to do for the day. I found the tourist information center and booked myself a day trip to Kuranda – traveling out by cable-car over the top of the rainforest and back down by scenic railway. The rainforest scenery was beautiful and couldn’t have been more of a contrast to my last few days in the ocean. I had a lot of fun trying to perfect self-portraits with my camera while I was traveling over the top of the rainforest in the cable car – hope no one saw me! Once in Kuranda I visited the Koala Sanctuary and hugged a Koala!
Monday saw the start of my diving course with Pro-Dive in Cairns – 2 days of pool and class-room based learning, followed by 3 days/2 nights on a boat out at the Great Barrier Reef. I have to admit to being more than a little bit nervous about learning to dive – I had heard so many good things about it, but I still couldn’t quite fathom how anyone would deliberately put themselves in a place where they could so easily drown and if not drown – come away with one of the many different diving related injuries we learned so much about in the first couple of days of the course!… By the time we got out on the boat, my nerves weren’t exactly dispelled!
The Pro-Dive course was great – very professionally run – my group of 8 was taught by 2 instructors and 2 assistants whenever we were in the water. I was with another great group of people – everyone passed the written exams and pool-based exercises and on Wednesday we headed out for our adventures on the boat. At this point our group joined other Pro-Dive groups – there were a total of 32 divers on the boat, with 7 crew.
The Pro-Dive course was great – very professionally run – my group of 8 was taught by 2 instructors and 2 assistants whenever we were in the water. I was with another great group of people – everyone passed the written exams and pool-based exercises and on Wednesday we headed out for our adventures on the boat. At this point our group joined other Pro-Dive groups – there were a total of 32 divers on the boat, with 7 crew.
Highlights of the dive trip included:
- Giving myself a serious talking to on the way down to the first dive in order to make myself continue
- Surfacing alive after my first dive!
- Going back for more
- Completing all the skills necessary to become a certified open-water diver
- Screwing up the underwater mask-flood exercise every time - pulling my mask off, snorting in water and finally calming myself enough to clear my mask and continue
- Completing my first unguided dive with my buddy Elise – getting completely lost and surfacing nowhere near the boat … a long swim back! We found Nemo though!
- My confidence in the water growing and deciding to go for it and take the adventure diver certification including completing a night dive and a 30m deep dive
- Completing my first (and best!!) night dive – guided by SpiderPig – where we saw Bryan the turtle, who is the size of a dining table, swimming around. We also saw three 2m Whaler sharks – the experience of which was heightened by the crew playing the Jaws theme tune as we got in to the water for our dive!
- Being branded ‘Team Turquoise’ because all of my nice new dive gear matches!
- Completing my deep water dive, where we saw a lion fish and sting rays and experienced how colours change with depth. I also managed to mess up the counting to 20 test!
- Taking a camera on dive 8 and getting some pretty good amateur shots - including one of Nemo!
- Returning to Cairns and partying the night away with cast and crew
- Recovering from my hangover to do it again…. And then catch my 6am flight to Tasmania…
No comments:
Post a Comment