Great, big, Barrier Reef (Monday, Feb 9)

Coconuts on Four-Mile Beach

We went to sleep pretty easily, and not too surprisingly, last night. The room is lovely. It's on the second floor with a balcony, a bathroom that has walls of frosted glass, a jacuzzi big enough for more than two people (we haven't made that good of friends on the trip yet), and a very comfortable bed. Alan woke up about 3 am, and only slept fitfully until we rose about 5:15. 

Sand Crabs clearing out their 'den' after high tide

The "Stingers" are jelly fish that inflict
 a nasty sting in this area at this time.  

The reason for the early rising was to find what we hoped to be a spectacular sunrise on Four-Mile Beach. Once we stepped out of our room, we were reminded that we are in the tropics. It was raining. We returned to the room, changed the style of our foot wear, and collected our rain ponchos. In five minutes we were on the beach looking for that elusive sunrise (about 6:10 am). We watched sand crabs clearing out the sand brought by the tides to their 'dens', a never-ending proposition. In spite of the rain and the clouds, we were still overwhelmed by the majesty and vastness of God's creation.

We returned to our room and got cleaned up and prepared for the day.  We had a buffet breakfast that reminded us more of the breakfasts that we have had abroad than American breakfasts, including roasted tomatoes, unsweetened yoghurt, lots of fruit, and hot tea. We haven't yet learned to take our tea with milk, as they do here. Alan made arrangements for our tour of the Daintree rainforest tomorrow.  Then it was time to gather for the bus ride into the Port Arthur harbor.

As an aside, for those of you wondering, when water goes down the drain here, the Swirl is clockwise (as opposed to 'anti-clockwise', as they say here).  I'll leave it to you to conduct your own experiment in the northern hemisphere. Feel to report your results in the comments. 

Next stop:The Great Barrier Reef. We boarded the bus for the short drive to the Port Douglas Reef Marina. As we left the bus, We were handed our tickets for the Quicksilver reef experience. We were early, so we browsed some tourist shops before boarding a large catamaran type boat specially designed to carry about 425 passengers, go fast and basically skim the surface. 

Since we were early, we found seats near the front of the boat facing forward. The sky was cloudy, with a light rain falling and the trade winds blowing. Seas were predicted to be rough, so Joyce put on sea bands and took Dramamine.

Staghorn Coral

We were headed to the Outer reef, Agincourt Reef, the southern most part of the ribbon reef along the continental shelf approximately 60 km away. It took us about 90 minutes to get there. As we headed to deeper water, the waves were larger and the boat moved quite a bit. Joyce was pleasantly surprised that the ride was enjoyable with no motion sickness or anxiety. Unfortunately the same could not be said for several other passengers. The crew was very attentive and trained to spot people in distress.  Two marine biologists were on board and we were treated to a short talk on the reef. One thing we learned is there are fish that live approximately 30 years and mate for life.  Four of the more than 400 species of coral were identified as staghorn, brain, mushroom and plate.

As we neared the reef the seas became calmer and the sky cleared to partly cloudy with  patches of sunlight. The water was beautiful, blue and clear. Near the horizon we could see breaking waves at the edge of the reef  between us and the continental shelf and a sharp drop-off.  The side of the reef we were on is much more shallow and conducive to calmer and safer viewing.  We arrived at the platform at approximately 11:30 a.m.

Quicksilver has a three story floating platform with everything you can imagine for reef viewing There were all sizes of fins, flotation jackets, snorkels, masks and diving equipment, etc. Lunch was even served! We walked around to begin with get a handle on what was available.

Underwater Observatory

We first used the underwater observatory. There weren't a lot of fish, but we enjoyed looking at the coral and watching a diver and one of the lifeguards enjoy a beginning-of-the-day swim.

One of the larger fish on the
Great Barrier Reef

We took a lot of pictures throughout the day, but the diffusion of light underwater evidently fooled the camera more than it fooled our eyes!  

The semi-submersible boat/observatory
took us on a short spin around the reef
to view fish and coral, and even squid and
turtles.. 

As we left the underwater observatory, we saw the line for the semi-submersible boat was short(er), so that was our next adventure. We were probably about 10 feet underwater and spent
approximately 25 minutes traveling in a large circle.

Blue and yellow were the main coral colors, with some red tips. We saw all the coral identified earlier by the marine biologist, many of them every large, We saw two sea turtles, jelly fish, rain fish who traveled in large schools and darted very quickly. We saw several larger fish as well as rasp, the small cleaner fish, which the larger fish allow to swim in, around, and through their gills to keep their teeth and skin clean. The size, variety of coral and fish were almost indescribable. 

We saw a number of clown fish ('Nemos').  We learned that all clown fish are born as males, and there is only one female per group.  If something happens to the female, the largest male grows even more and becomes a female in the span of about 2 weeks.  Some of the other fish that we saw mate for life.  It's an amazing world down there!

The motion of the boat and the warm temperature made both Alan & Joyce a little queasy. We left the boat and sat for several minutes in the fresh air before enjoying a lunch buffet of seafood, salads, fruit and bread. 

The launching area for the snorkelers.
They could then proceed out into more
open water, marked off by buoys.

Alan had decided not to snorkel, given the difficult conditions and his lack of swimming skills, but Joyce was still considering it. We watched those that were snorkeling and noticed they seemed to be fighting the waves. Joyce decided her limited experience in a pool would not be enough to produce an enjoyable experience. Those decisions were confirmed by one of our fellow passengers in the buffet line who had some experience snorkeling and said that the conditions were very difficult for him, to the point that he didn't enjoy it as much as he thought he would.

At around 2:15 p.m. we headed back to the boat to get seated for the return to Port Douglas. Many of our fellow passengers had returned ahead of us and all the seats inside were taken. We found seats on the back deck outside on the 2nd level. Next came the passenger count, which is no small task with over 400 people aboard. We were told to stay in one place from the announcement until the count was finished and an 'all clear' was given. As you can imagine, people had difficulty with the concept of sitting still. After counting all the passengers  three times to make sure all were aboard, we left the reef at approximately 3 p.m. We were told by people seated next to us that last year a woman was missed in the count and drowned, so we certainly understood their caution. 

The semi-permanent,anchored reef platform.  It holds more than
400 guests in addition to numerous staff members to interpret the
reef, and feed them!

As we left the reef and headed toward shore, the wind picked up and storm clouds became visible. It started raining lightly at first, then came down in sheets. We grabbed our stuff and headed inside, which was a challenging task the way the boat was pitching. We finally found a place with two empty seats. The waves became larger as we made our way into the shipping channel with deeper water. We 'weathered' the experience fine with neither of us getting sick or panicked. Unfortunately, our fellow passengers weren't as fortunate.  One of the staff members working with some of the less fortunate around us said that it wasn't unusual to experience some rough seas coming back, but said this was a 'special' experience.  We were glad to see the Port Douglas Marina!

While driving back to our hotel, Midge, our GoNext contact, told us about a previous trip with similar weather. There was a priest from Notre Dame in the group and she jokingly turned to him and said, "Father, can't you do anything about this weather?" He replied, "No, I'm in sales, not production."

We were very tired when we made it back to our room. We decided to take a short nap, but should have set an alarm, because we slept for two hours. After our nap, we went to the hotel restaurant and looked over their menu. We weren't very hungry and nothing looked good (and of course, Alan wasn't prepared to pay the high Australian prices for food that didn't sound that appetizing!). We tried to use the internet with limited success and with the help of Kendra at the front desk, settled on ordering a four-cheese pizza and a couple sodas. It was very good. After a bubble in our in-room Jacuzzi, we ended our first amazing day in Australia.