Well, I have just returned from my trip to Cairns in one piece. The only injuries sustained were flipper blisters and a sting by some unknown coral resident. I am now a certified scuba diver! I'm officially an Open Water diver and an Adventure diver, meaning I am allowed to go to depths up to 30 meters (98 feet). Yep, that's pretty deep. The 5-day course consisted of 2 days in the classroom and the pool. We started out in 1 meter deep water and then moved on to 4-meter deep (12ish feet). Most of the skills I learned were death-prevention skills - taking my regulator out of my mouth and putting it back in, taking my mask off and putting it back on, breathing off of a buddy's regulator as I would do if I were to run out of air. On the morning of the 3rd day, we got on a boat and took a 3 hour trip out to the Great Barrier Reef! The first and second days we completed 2 training dives each and then I was certified by the end of the 2nd day!
It was SO COOL to swim with the fish! Part of our training, we had to kneel on the bottom of the ocean and do the regulator, mask skills, etc and at one point a fish came swimming up to me and stared at me for a while. I wanted to touch it but I saw that it had teeth so I changed my mind. It got a little frustrating controlling buoyancy so I didn't sink to the bottom or shoot to the top, but I kept reminding myself of how many face plants I did while trying to learn to ski. Now, i can make it down a blue-black without my face touching any snow. That was encouraging.
Being on the boat was amazing. I got a little sick on the first day. I carried around a vomit bag for the most part of that day, but never had to use it, thank goodness. Sunsets were gorgeous and at night I could see every star in the sky! I even saw lots of shooting stars. It was interesting because the southern hemisphere has different constellations than we're used to in the northern hemisphere. Orion is on the horizon but he's upside down. That messes with my mind a little bit.
I met tons of really awesome people in the course. There were people from Canada, South Africa, England, Belgium, Ireland, Germany, and Holland. They were all about my age and passing through Cairns on trips through Australia. We had a lot of fun scuba diving together.
I rented a camera on one of the dives, but the fish wouldn't stay still long enough to get a good picture. I also forgot to turn on the flash. Oops. It was still really fun. I saw a giant clam which is as big as a man's torso - don't want to put your hand too close to that thing.
A few of my favorites...
The first night, we weren't able to do a night dive becuase we weren't yet certified but we were entertained by watching reef sharks hunt fish around the boat. The second dive we did a night dive were you couldn't see a thing. We all had glow sticks attached to our oxygen tanks and flashlights. None of the sharks came out of hiding, though. I did see a stingray or 2. It was a little disconcerting as we were descending under water and our guide was sweeping quickly with his flashlight. I think he was looking for sharks. Sweet.
On our deep dive training dive, we went down about 100 feet and we all almost ran out of air. That was a rush.
So yeah, there ya go. I can cross scuba diving the Great Barrier Reef off my list of things to do before I die. I definitely want to go back. There's roughly 400 kilometers of reef along the Australia coast. I saw maybe two of those kilometers.
Listening to: Coldplay
