the reef

I can't believe we are halfway done with the semester . . . time is really flying. Just arrived back in Sydney last night from our midsession break. IES took our study abroad group up north to Queensland. We fit so much in five short days, my head is spinning!

Sunday: We arrived in Cairns, and immediately I felt like I was on vacation. Cairns has a Florida-feel to it, with palm trees and tropical flowers everywhere, humid 90 degree weather, and lots of water of course. We stayed at the infamous backpackers hostel, Gilligan's ("where it's a party all the time"), right in the heart of Cairns. We put down our luggage and immediately were off to the Barron River Gorge National Park for white water rafting. Somehow I managed not to fall out of the boat although our guide let us swim down a few rapids, which was completely crazy. That night we all had dinner together down on the marina.

Monday-Wednesday: These three days were some of the most unbelievable of my life. Early Monday morning we boarded a boat that took us on an hour and a half ride out to the

Barrier Reef, where we switched over to the OceanQuest, who was anchored there, waiting for us. We lived on OceanQuest for the next couple of days. It was just an amazing experience.

Every morning we all woke up at 6 to go scuba diving or snorkeling, because it was the best time to see marine life. This was my first time open water diving and now I am completely addicted. I cant wait to get certified in October. I did six dives out on the Barrier Reef. We were cruising around Norman and Saxon Reefs and so I did all of my dives in different sites around there. The staff on the boat was great; Nobby and Neil were our two dive leaders (husband and wife!). Too easy, too easy. Nobby had a pink underwater clipboard that she would bring down with us so that she could write the names of all the fish and corals and crustaceans that we were passing . . . so cute!

Sightings included:

small leopard shark, stingray, barracuda, giant clam, pink anemone fish, parrotfish, morray eel

On the third dive, Dawn (my awesome roomie, who is studying abroad at University of Sydney) spotted cuttlefish on the ocean floor! Nobby swam up to one and immediately it camouflaged itself by changing from brown to white right in front of our eyes! It was incredible to see. On my fourth dive, Neil took us down and we followed a giant Green Sea Turtle as it fed on seaweeds among the coral. The coolest part though was that Neil broke off a piece of seaweed and let me feed it! I will never forget the experiences I had on the OceanQuest. Nor will I forget Ollie and his eyebrow ring, Val's tattoo, the horrible rocking of the boat at all times, Merlin in his party hat, and Dawn spotting the milky way (Jeff: Why's it so milky?).

Thursday: On Thursday we had a free day in Cairns, so I had booked a helicopter ride over the Barrier Reef. It was just me up in front with the pilot (who I had been informed was 29 and single . . . by his boss), and then three other passengers in back. The only other time I've been in a helicopter was over Victoria Falls in Zambia, so I was super excited to go again. And the trip was absolutely stunning. It was an hour flight and we flew far out over the reef, even flying over the areas where I had been diving the day before. We landed for a few minutes on Green Island, before continuing over some other areas. The colors of the water were unreal, every shade of aqua and turquoise and cobalt blue that you could possibly imagine. Our pilot even pointed out massive eagle rays swimming below us. We flew over part of the Daintree rainforest too. I'm posting some photos down below from the helicopter ride.

I spent the rest of the day with Dawn at the manmade Cairns Lagoon (Blue Lagoon??), which was actually really beautiful. I was burnt to a crisp though. For happy hour, we snuck into the pool at the fancy Shangri La hotel and had pina coladas and mojitos at the bar. Then we rushed back to Gilligan's to meet the rest of the group for a Aborigine cultural dinner, Flames in the Forest, which we were attending that night. Let's just say that the champagne and wine were free and unlimited so we all had a fantastic night. The only bad part though is that I don't remember much about the Platypus story that our Aborigine leader told. I do know that Jeff, Jen, Lisa and I had a good time at our end of the table naming our trees (Salt and Peppa?) and being ridiculous in general. The food was amazing too. There were at least 6 courses ranging from salads and "bush damper", to kangaroo and crocodile linguini (!!), barramundi rolled in banana leaves with coconut and papaya salad, vanilla poached chicken . . . and pavlova for dessert. yum.

Friday: I won't go into much detail on our activities on Friday but just to sum up, we spent the morning parasailing, jetskiing, and tubing at the marina, and then spotting crocodiles at a Croc Farm in the afternoon. Before we knew it, we were back at the Airport, eating Hungry Jack'sfor dinner and waiting to fly back to Sydney.

I had the most amazing week away! But now I'm happy to be back at Basser, again.