This was the day for our trip to the Great Barrier Reef. At 7 a.m. we walked down to the boat dock which wasn’t that far from where we were staying. Cairns has also changed a lot since our last visit – the boat dock has become very elegant with a smart hotel and expensive shopping mall, not to mention an infinity fountain.
We were travelling in a big catamaran called Pleasures of Paradise which took 80 people on board. It took two and a half hours to reach the first stop, Michaelmas Cay. We had travelled inside, as the journey was very choppy and the wind very cold. So it was with great surprise and displeasure that we realised quite how cold and windy it was when we got into the glass bottomed boat in our swimsuits. The glass bottomed boat was excellent. We saw a great diversity of coral and of fish. Paul was at first surprised by the fact that so much of the coral was mud coloured. But after you look at it a bit, you see many different gradations in the colour and it is fascinating. We saw so many giant clams, often with deep purple insides, though they usually quickly flicked shut as soon as the boat passed over them. After our journey, when we saw a lot more than coral than the snorkelers, we went onto Michaelmas Cay. The Cay is a world-famous bird sanctuary with a beautiful sandy beach, and is supposed to give you an opportunity to snorkel and dive straight off the beach in protected, calm waters. Apparently, sea turtles are common and you are also likely to see giant trevally, small black tip reef sharks, bat fish and hundreds of species of colourful reef fish. Most of the Cay is roped off and set aside for the birds.
Unfortunately, it was absolutely freezing and the wind cut like a knife so we opted not to stay and not to snorkel, and took our shivering selves back to the boat and the warm saloon. When lunch time was declared, the saloon was filled with people who were covered with gooseflesh, whose knees were knocking, and who looked like smumfs , they were so blue with cold. Fortunately, there was some hot food for lunch.
After lunch, we set off for Paradise Reef, a hard coral reef featuring a ribbon of small reefs, with depths of up to 25 metres. As there was no prospect of going in here from the beach, we didn’t even contemplate it.
Most of the snorkelers opted not to go in again because of the cold, and those who did go in didn’t stay more than 10 minutes. After an hour, it was time to sail back to Cairns, which we did mostly by sail. This made it very rough and some people were quite ill during the journey – not us, fortunately. It was quite disappointing that it was so cold and windy that we felt too uncomfortable to swim, I certainly managed to do a bit last time I was out there. But it appears Cairns has been having an unseasonably cold snap, which makes a bit of a change. No doubt we will be longing for the cold again when we get to Darwin!
On our return to cairns, we said goodbye to the last of our fellow travellers, that being the end of our first trip, and went off to visit family who live in Cairns.
No comments:
Post a Comment