Diving the Great Barrier Reef and River Rafting!

I've been in Cairns for 4 days now. The first night I arrived I met a really nice girl from Germany. She was around the same age and was a lawyer back home. We had dinner and a drink then off to bed. I took the next day to make my plan and research what I was going to do for the next 3-4 weeks. I checked out flights to Thailand and decided with much dissapointment that it's not in my budget. Sad to admit but I'd rather not go into debt over it. Apparently January is a very expensive time to go. Who knew. Oh well...it would have been a bonus to make it over there anyway.

I went to bed fairly early and a super hot and humid day. Very uncomfortable to sleep and mosquitos everywhere! They love me so much! Oh yeah, and how come no one warned me about the flies! My gosh they are huge, slow and so frickin annoying! ha ha. : )

Yesterday I met the Ocean Freedom at 7:30am and we set sail at 8am for the Great Barrier Reef! What a trip! Wow! It was insane. The night before there was a huge storm and it turned up the sea. The Coral sponning only happens once a year and it happened that night. The visibility wasn't as good as it could have been but it was still amazing! It was like the movie "Finding Nemo" down there! I saw a beautiful big sea turtle making its way around the reef my himself, a medium sized sting ray and tons of beautiful fish (including a much of Nemo's family!), soft and slimy coral, hard coral, sea cumcumbers etc. It was AMAZING! Ever since I got certified to dive 10 years ago I have been dreaming of the day I would get to dive the Great Barrier Reef! Simply amazing. I'm so thankful.

Today I got picked up at 6:30am to travel to The Tully where I would go River Rafting. Now, being from Vancouver you would have assumed that I've done this before but I'm kinda glad I haven't cause doing it in the rainforest in warm water is the way to go for sure! The Rafting guides were awesome and I had such a good time... oh except for the first rapids where the guide tossed us out of the boat (on purpose) to get us ready for some bigger ones. I got caught under the boat and couldn't find my way out. It seemed to last forever but I finally popped out the other side, slamming my knee and drawing blood. Ha ha! My knee has a huge bruise on it and is pretty tender but man o man was it crazy/scary! The other rapids varied in difficulty but we got through them all. I jumped off another cliff today and slid down a rock face upside down too! ha ha. It was awesome! Near the end of the day the sky opened up and it started to poor buckets! What an amazing day!

Taking it easy tonight as I'm up at 4am tomorrow morning to be picked up at 4:30am and taked to the airport. Flight for Brisbane leaves at 6am but it's just a couple hours down the coast. I'll stay in there for a couple weeks I think. Nice to know a few people there to hang out with.

After Brisbane I'm going to go fly to Alice Springs and do a 2 night/3day trip to Aryes Rock in Central Australia. It's a bit of a journey but I've heard it's pretty cool to see the rock at sunrise and sunset. After that back to Sydney for Christmas and New Years then on to Melbourne in January!

Until next time...