Before
getting to Cairns we stopped in Mission Beach for a few hours, but this small
town is mostly a stopover for tourists that want to skydive or do white water
rafting. Apart from that, the beach is miserable compared to Sydney
or Byron Bay. We left in the night bus for
another hour to Cairns.
Already
in Cairns the
shuttle from our hostel “The Serpent” picked us at the bus station. Most
hostels will pick you up, however they will definitely not drop you off
anywhere.
The
hostel was very nice, clean beds, hot showers with pressure, cheap and tasty
food for dinner and the bar had events every night.
Cairns is supposed to be the diving capital of the world
for the amount of tourists that come every year to dive the Great
Barrier Reef. The reef is some kilometers out in the ocean from
the north east coast of Australia.
It goes from south of cairns
until past the north east coast of the country. It is the largest reef in the
world; however with the amount of people diving every year, the reef is dying.
Within a few years there will be nothing left if the government does not put a
limit into it.
Considering
those facts I could not miss the opportunity to dive there, in that case I took
the advantage to book a diving course to improve my qualifications to advanced
diver in a three days live aboard.
One
day of rest between getting to cairns
and going diving was enough. David and Leon both left to Singapore and I left for the live aboard after
two nights in Cairns.
The company was Deep Divers Den. They own two boats, a small one called Reef
Quest which does the day dives and takes the passengers to the large one; Ocean
Quest ( the live aboard).
The
first day, the smaller boast takes us to one of the reefs in the Great Barrier
and there we do one dive. After a great lunch, the people staying on the Ocean
Quest (larger boat) transferred and were allocated into the rooms. The rooms
were quite spacious; each dorm room had two bunk beds, which were extremely
close to the ceiling. Getting down from the top bed and not hitting against the
ceiling was a morning and night pee task.
With
the luggage in place and beds allocated a new briefing and a new dive; however
this one was already part of the course. After the dive we had some time to
rest and have dinner. The meal wasn’t as great as on land, but good enough when
you are suffering from diving munchies. About one hour after dinner our last
dive for the day, but now it was night, one light in the stern illuminating the
water from the top and one line going into the water from the bow were bringing
a mass of fish life. The light brought many small fish, which would attract
larger fish, ending utmost in sharks. If it wasn’t enough, one of the
instructors was throwing chunks of meat in the water. The sharks would wrestle
for the feeding almost biting each other.
We
had our briefing and suited for the dive. Going into the water at night for the
first time is like skydiving, blood rushes into the veins as you jump into the
water looking at the sharks circulating the light above.
Once
in the water the darkness towards where the torch doesn’t point disguises the
life underneath. Visibility is as far as the light goes, wither from the torch
or from the boat light. The life underwater is much like above, many animals go
to sleep; turtles, rays, and some other fish are under rocks and mostly without
moving. If you light them, they will wake up and most likely be eaten by one of
the night predators, such as sharks and barracudas. Another interesting fact is
that most fish cannot see to far at night, when we point the light at a small
fish, a larger one will rush into that fish hunting for its meal.
The
dive was done, but it was great for a first day. A desert followed the dive,
since dinner was not enough for the big eaters.
Sleeping
in a boat after diving the whole day is much like a baby sleeping in a cradle. It
cannot get better then this.
The
first dive was at 6:30 in the morning, whoever was doing that dive had to be on
the deck at 6 am for the briefing. Waking up at 5:50 wasn’t a problem since I
was already sleeping around 9:30. Another dive for the course, but now it was a
deep dive. Because we were at 25 meters under sea level, some facts differ from
shallow dives. The instructor took a tomato, a water bottle and an egg with
him; the water bottle was almost flat because of the water pressure, the tomato
was brown instead of red (red is the first color to dissipate), and the egg
yolk was used for our own entertainment, again because of the water pressure,
the yolk does not break apart and we could play with, passing it to each other.
To
be continued...
