Day Ten - The Great Barrier Reef

We get up, have breakfast, and take the bus to our Great Barrier Reef outer islands tour. As we get on the bus the driver informs us that it is windy and the sea is choppy; we can decide to go another day. Since we are booked for our other days and don’t mind heavy water anyway, we board the bus.

The boat departs from the city to the North of us (Port Douglas). It’s a huge, all welded aluminum motor catamaran with at least three decks and space for oodles of folks. We sit outside. The sky is grey, and there is a moderate chop with very small whitecaps.

I don’t know what we were expecting, but it wasn’t this. The catamaran drives for over an hour at about 35 knots to get to the reef station. This is a huge, floating pontoon structure that is more or less permanently moored to a section of the outer reef. The pontoon structure has ropes with floats strung out in the water, and you are permitted to snorkel, but only if you stay withing the floats and ropes. The pontoon also has boats with deep plexiglass hulls; you can sit down in the hull, have an excellent vies of the underwater scene, and leave the driving to the tour operators.
I am eager to get in the water and am the first on the boat to don snorkel, face mask and fins. It’s still grey, cool and choppy. Miriam decides not to snorkel because she had trouble last time we went in choppy water with the chop filling the snorkel. I stay out for between half and hour and an hour. There is a wide array of different types of coral, and many, many fish. It is actually most interesting to float quietly on the surface; that doesn’t spook the fish and just floating allows me to see more because I don’t have to think about where I’m going or how to coordinate my breathing with my paddling.

I see a giant clam with a crenellated shell; it’s three feet long. I dive down to it, and can see its siphon extended about three inches out into the water from between the crenellations; the siphon hole is about an inch and a half in diameter and moves slowly in an otherworldly fashion.

It’s probably the grey sky and lack of sun, but the colors are all very muted, except for a few fish. We snorkeled in Hawaii, and the colors were more vibrant.

I climb out and find Miriam, who is just about to board one of the boats with the transparent bottoms. We climb in, but must wait to sit while an attendant fills holders on the side walls with medium sized white paper bags. I don’t understand what they are for. Miriam leans over and explains that they are barf bags, and that they all got used up on the last trip. I notice the chop is increasing.

The trip is interesting. We see several squid, a small shark, a barracuda, giant clams, pretty fish and lots and lots of coral. But it all looks grayish because of the clouds and chop. Miriam and I both realize that there is no bathroom on this vessel, and that we should have used one before we boarded. We are not able to focus as we should on the wonders of the last half of the trip.

After making the required visits to the smallest rooms on the boat we have lunch. It’s a nice buffet and we are hungry. We eat looking out over the ocean, which has grown increasingly grey and choppy. We each have a rum on the rocks. The rum is made nearby, where a lot of sugarcane is grown. I admire Australian pricing. The rum costs the same as a coke, and only slightly more than a bottle of water.

The trip back is rough, but the high point of the day. Miriam and I ride back the whole way on the upper deck. The wind is blowing so hard that we can’t easily look straight ahead. Then the wind and waves increase and we have to move to the side of the boat because the blowing spray stings so badly we can’t open our eyes at all. The boat starts to buck and we have to hang on to the side railing with both hands and take in the shock with our legs. It is almost like waterskiing without having your feet in the water, and with a much better view. Miriam wears her biggest grin of the day through most of the ride back.

We take the bus back to our hotel and, as we are wont to do, go to bed early.