My dad has been SCUBA certified for years and has always dreamed of diving the Great Barrier Reef. My dad likes traveling but he isn't the type of person to really spend money on vacations and doesn't have that much time off of work. I knew if I didn't practically FORCE him to go with me, he would never go. So I gave him 2 years notice and told him to start saving and ask for the time off now because we were going down under whether he liked it or not! I started my SCUBA training in Boston and did fine in the classroom and pool sessions but struggled a little more to do the open water tests in the 55 degree F water of Boston Harbor so I decided I would finish my training while we were in Australia.
I flew in from Boston and my dad flew in from Minneapolis and we met at LAX before the 15 hour long flight to Syndey. With my flight from Boston, a long layover in LA and the epically (and painfully) long flight to Sydney I had about 27 hours of traveling in before we even landed! When we got to Sydney we were both tired and sore but we landed at about 9am and only really had a day and a half in Syndey so we had to make the best of it. My dad was a trooper when I told him the best way to beat jet lag is to go by the local time so we checked into the hotel and immediately set out to explore Sydney! Our hotel was in a cute area of town and we walked around a bit and grabbed a delicious burger before our Sydney Harbour Bridge climb later that afternoon. The climb was entriely worth it! We had amazing whether and could see for miles once we got to the top. We got the best view in the city from 470ft above the water on top of one of the largest steel arch bridges in the world. The next day we headed out to catch the ferry to Taronga Zoo where we saw koalas, tazmanian devils, wombats, and kangaroos - my dad could not have been happier!
Next we headed out to Cairns to jump on a liveaboard boat for a few days to see and explor the Great Barrier Reef. We were so busy diving that we actually don't have any pictures of us diving but my dad brought a gopro so I was able to make a cool compliation video of all our dives together! We did 11 dives in 3 days and 2 of them were night dives. I have been lucky enough to have some pretty amazing experiences in my travels but this is definitely near the top of that list
