Finding Nemo

We were up bright and breezy this morning in Cairns. I say bright and brezzy...we hardly got any sleep last night probably due to staying in bed till 3:30 on Sunday. We were to embark on a voyage that would take us 18 miles from Cairns to the Great Barrier Reef.
We left the hostel at 8:10 after enduring the hostel bathroom. Some pleasant person had left a dirty brown looking 'mess' over the toilet and bathroom walls...Nice!! At 8:30 we boarded 'The Falla'. An old boat used to fish for Pearls back in the 50's. I could bore you all with the history of it...I wont!! So now it is used to transport the likes of me and tom to the Great Barrier Reef for Snorkeling and Diving day trips. It took about 90mins to get there. The sun was shining, with crystal clear water. The views were amazing!! I could have stayed there forever (if i was a millionaire!). We swam around the coral, and saw all sorts of different fish, not that i can name any of them. The colours of some of the fish were abousolutly staggering. We also saw sea cucumbers and bright blue star fish. It was amazing! After an hours snorkel we had a break for some lunch back on the boat, which was followed by more snorkeling, this time on the otherside of the reef. It was alot more shallow here and I managed to get my waterproof video camera up and running, so hopefully i will be able to put that online soon. We probably swam for another hour or so and then headed back to the boat. It was such an amazing day, and by far the best one of this trip. It was scenes like that, that you only see in magazines!! Sadly however on the way back as i was taking my new digital camera out of its case, combined with a sudden jerk of the boat, the camera flew out of my hand and over board! Absolutely gutting! Thankfully i had saved all of the photos i had from HK onto my iPod, but we had so many pics from today!! I wasnt bothered too much about the camera, that is insured and can be replaced (hopefully), but its the photos...argh!! Thankfully i still have the waterproof camera and video footage, and one of the other people on the trip took my email address so she could email us some photos. Gutting! However it was a fairly insignificant event in what was such an amazing day. I can definatley say that i will be going back to The Falla and i will recomend it to everyone we meet on the way down the coast! Sadly we didnt see Nemo, but hopefully we might see him further down the coast. I think we are gonna save a proper Scuba dive until we get to Fiji - we have heard it is amazing there!!

We have bought our Greyhound pass now, so we are going to head south late tomoro (on the overnight bus to save a nights accom) to Airlie Beach and Whitsunday island area! Hopefully it will be just as awesome as Cairns has been.