Cairnsdive

 A loud hello to you folks up there!

I arrived at four o’clock in the morning in Cairns with the aim to stay awake during my dive course, which started at eight sharp. I dropped off my bags at the Waterfront backpackers, where I met up with a friend from school, Youp Salemink from the Netherlands. We are going to stay the next three weeks together for learning to dive in Cairns for two days, doing our certificates on a three day “liveaboard” trip at the Great Barrier Reef and finally for a 13 days, 3000km road trip down the coast with our surfboards back to Sydney, where we want to be in time for the big new year’s party!

Jetstar A320 – how I felt during that flight is to be read in the last chapter…

Take off in Perth at 10pm(local, +7hrs from CH).

The humidity and heat struck me straight after I came out of the air conditioned airport. Touch down at 4.10am(local, +9hrs from CH), “the estimated outside temperature is 26 degrees Celsius”.

Sunrise around five.

After two days pool training, we finally got out to the real stuff! The Kangaroo Explorer, our home for the next 3 days.

The dive deck(lowest at the back of the boat).

As it is tropical and the start of the wet season, it happened sometimes to pour really strongly down during five minutes and the sun reappeared.

Got my night dive, 30m depth and navigation certificate in addition to the normal open water license.

The daily schedule on board.

If you, as a student, went beneath the limit of 18.00 meters, then you would have to eat one bit of Vegemite (google that!!-Wüüüürg!). Unfortunately, I didn’t watch my dive computer for the one very second when we were swimming on this level…I got 19.6 meters and got to eat the biggest spoon here. -.-

Was probably the worst thing I’ve ever eaten. Everybody on board came to watch it, even the instructor had to take pictures…this stuff is disastrous; I’ve never ever eaten something worse tasting! It tastes as if you put grease, sweat and some salty wheat together and make salty jam out of it. Terrific. -.-

The sea could also be quite rough and it got pretty bumpy!

On the other hand, we had always some bit of sunshine a day.

The reef.

The reef from another perspective!  =D Enjoy the following pictures!

 

 Hang loose! =D

One species of turtles like being scratched on their back and are not afraid if human do that task. Awesome!

This little fish seemed to have fallen in love for me. It accompanied me on my whole way back to the vessel, eagerly trying to keep up with Youp and me! Haha

 

Youp Salemink pointing in direction of the boat.

Diving is pretty tiring. So many things to see but also to look after! – Air check-fish-Depth check- fish-time check -fish-breath slowly-fish-getting up slowly-fish-safety stop-fish aaaand so on.

This is Antonio a witty, Spanish guy.

Back in tropical Cairns, completely satisfied with CDC(Cairns Dive Center). It was indeed a fantastic trip!

Dundree National Park in the north, a world heritage site and unfortunately no time to see it…

So, up to now, we have finished already the diving part and should have already picked up our car and been driving at least 500km down the coast, but the car company made a mistake with our booking. That costs us, though we got a full refund (thank you Jerry, think this time I got an excellent letter of complaint! - mark 5 minimum =D !!) and some consolation, one and a half days, which means additionally, that we have only 10 days left! However, we took it more the less with humour and are going to pick up that little camper tomorrow afternoon and drive about nine hours to Airlie beach.

All the best!

Flo