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| What a life! |
The boat was a Lagoon, made in France and cost $90,000 Australian to have shipped here, they could have sailed her for $60,000 but wanted to be able to advertise her as a new boat. It had five ensuite cabins, and a galley for up to 10 overnight guests. While we enjoyed the sunset cruise a charter overnight would have broke the piggy bank.
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| Aqurius |
Port Douglas is a beautiful town, with palm trees throughout, little restaurants and shops. It is very clean, with no garbage or debris on either the beaches or the streets, but then Australia is probably the cleanest country I have travelled in. No where did we see any garbage or debris around. The most we seen was the odd bottle and a couple of car wrecks along the tracks between Adelaide and Alice Springs.
Port Douglas is different than most beach resort towns as they have protected the beach by leaving a strip of land between the beach edge and development, not even the two golf courses are allowed to build out to the beach. Other than the area at the stinger net the beach is not busy at this time, on a two mile walk we meet about ten other people and no one in the water, although there were a bunch of young guys, in neoprene, windsurfing yesterday. That looks like a lot of fun.
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| Stinger net and beach |
We went out to the Great Barrier Reef on a sister ship, the Calypso, a combination dive and snorkel boat for a day of snorkeling. As I got some kind of sinus infection diving in Bali that was not cleared up I could not dive here but was content snorkeling on the reef.
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| Snorkeling queen |
Contrary to what I thought, the Great Barrier Reef is not one great reef, but a series of interconnected smaller reefs that runs for 3500kms along the eastern coast line. Each reef, although part of the GBR, has its own name and each tour boat of course has the very best reef in the chain! We went out to three different sites at Opal reef which is comprised of a number of interconnected areas.
The reef itself is like an underwater garden, with coral in brilliant hues of green, blue, purple, reds and orange. All different shapes and sizes, and scattered throughout, plants that move with the currents like fields in the wind. It was all spectacular.
We wore full neoprene stinger suits, so the only part of your body not covered were your hands. Stingers were in the water as I saw two at the last site, but neither were the dangerous types.
Fish were plentiful and colorful, just about any color on the rainbow could be found. I was looking for mermaids while Loreen was looking for Nemo, (clown fish) neither of us saw what we were looking for, although I did think I saw a clown fish, but maybe was mistaken. Loreen was fortunate enough to see a white tip reef shark at the one site, I was still trying to make a graceful entry into the water and the splash probably spooked it away.
We had one guided reef tour but, with all the snorkelers trying to be as close to the guide as possible, after getting the third or fourth fin in the face we struck out on our own, didn't learn any thing, but were unbruised. We had 27 snorkelers and divers on board and I was sure glad we went out on this boat rather than one of the competitors who has two boats that hold 440 people each and go to the same reef where they have a reef platform set up. You would be too busy dodging other snorkelers to ever see the reef.
Our only incident was at the last reef where we decided to not follow the crowd but go to the other end of the reef. So with Loreen in the lead we set off. Once she got turned in the direction of China and we got shouted at by the boat crew, we immediately turned for Europe and got redirected by the crew again. We were swimming against the current and it took a long time to get to the far side of the reef, but it was quick coming back.
Our last day in Oz tomorrow then off to new horizons.
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