Great Barrier Reef - Scuba diving and snorkeling

Hi there adventurous people,

On Monday the 30th of December Markus and I got up early (Not again! We are on holidays!) to get picked up for our Great Barrier Reef experience! YEAH! At the marina of Port Douglas we had to take of our shoes before boarding the boat. That’s some good laid-back start for the day! The crew welcomed us onboard and handed us some paperwork that we had to fill in before we could do any activities such as snorkeling or scuba diving. There was a question about having ever fainted or if you had blackouts in the past. Well, I had blackouts and so I crossed that one with “Yes”. I got questioned about this and was told that they were not sure if they could take the risk and let me do scuba diving! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I took part in the introductory anyway and suddenly it was time to get the equipment and get ready! How exciting. So we got in the water after the professional divers had left the boat. Then we had to do some movements just under the water surface to show the instructor that we are capable of the most basic skills in the water. I was so excited and unrelaxed that I did not breath normally. It took me three tries to do the first one and the instructor already suggested that I should go snorkeling instead. But then I got the hang of it and passed all three.

Slowly we got down with the help of a rope and equalizing while we went down. Surprisingly Markus was not able to equalize his left ear. That is the one that got damaged during a car accident that he was involved in (not by his fault) last year. Unfortunately this made it completely impossible for him to continue and so he went snorkeling instead. I followed the instructor down to about 8-9 metres and then we went off to swim around. Of course always supervised by the instructor who helped us navigate, stay away from the corals and when we had any problems whatsoever. I had difficulties to stay at the same level at the beginning and so the instructor had to pull me down several times. By the end I was also able to manage that and relax enough to take in the surroundings. The corals are so diverse and there are a lot of fishes around. We even saw a really huge rainbow-coloured fish hiding in the corals, so we waited a few seconds and it got out again. After twenty minutes we got slowly out again and the instructor was very pleased with us. Here the pictures which we bought of the crew photographer.

Markus had a good time snorkeling but was of course very sad that he could not dive. I can totally understand him. It’s a great experience and so I did a second dive (this time the instructor gave me an additional waist weight, so I would not drift up again). The boat drove to another reef more in the Inner Reef. The second dive went much more smoothly than the first one and we saw even more fish and even swam through a swarm! At one point the instructor did the hand sign for shark and pointed somewhere! But I did not see any shark. PUH! 20 minutes later we went up again and I was so pleased with myself and I did not use as much air as with the first dive either. But I was utterly exhausted after that second dive. After lunch on board I did not feel like another dive and also snorkeling felt too much for me. So I watched Markus and the others go into the water at a reef very low under the water.

30 minutes later everyone went back onboard and we headed for Port Douglas. During this time we paid our reef tax and got a refund for the dives that Markus could not do. At 5pm we were back in Port Douglas, had a shower and dinner. Then we got all our stuff together for our next stop for New Years Eve: Cairns!

Yours scuba-diving Stefanie