{"id":2982,"date":"2014-02-17T04:35:02","date_gmt":"2014-02-17T12:35:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=2982"},"modified":"2014-02-17T04:35:02","modified_gmt":"2014-02-17T12:35:02","slug":"part-of-that-world-cairns-australia-02172014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=2982","title":{"rendered":"Part of That World \u2013 Cairns, Australia \u2013 [02\/17\/2014]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Great<\/a>We got no troubles life is the bubbles
\nUnder the sea!<\/i><\/p>\n

My very first contract on the flagship we stopped in Cairns (in the rain, a lot<\/i> of rain) and in the course of my souvenir shopping I came across a backpack patch for the Great Barrier Reef, there were quite a few people who were puzzled as to why I didn\u2019t purchase it at the time, but my reasoning was quite simple<\/p>\n

I can only say I\u2019ve been to the Reef once I\u2019ve snorkelled it\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

For me patches are like Girl Scout badges, you have to earn<\/i> them.<\/p>\n

And so I waited nearly three years for the opportunity to arise to lay claim to that particular badge. Even when the flyer came out saying that there were spaces open for the crew to go on one of the Great Barrier Tours I was leery, it\u2019s a lot of money, but there are some things you just have to do because you really don\u2019t know when you\u2019ll get another chance.<\/p>\n

This is the first time I have been on a tour of any kind that did not involve a bus; instead we were directed right off the ship onto the two deck catamaran that would take us to the Marine Park pontoon. It was a long ride out \u2013 an hour and a half each way \u2013 and I had been warned that it could get rough, but considering that I was the kid who once scared her mother to death by riding the ferry wake in a tin speedboat\u2026I wasn\u2019t exactly concerned. Besides, the trip was very smooth considering we were in open ocean. That said, there wasn\u2019t much to see until we actually got to the pontoon.<\/p>\n

Since it\u2019s jelly-fish season in the area most of us rented a lyrca skin suit before venturing anywhere near the water (side note, Lyrca = automatic superhero jokes), then the certified divers headed off in one direction and the rest of us donned masks and fins\u00a0 and struck out into the waves for snorkeling.<\/p>\n

Oh. My. Goddess.<\/p>\n

Hang on\u2026trying to find the right words here.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d never really<\/i> snorkeled before this, not really, not when there was actually anything to see; I mean I\u2019d splashed around a bit at the beach in Fiji last season and seen perhaps \u2026one fish. But snorkeling the Barrier? It\u2019s like entering into a totally different world, a beautiful, grateful, alien universe that is almost impossible to reconcile with the insanity of the world above the surface.<\/p>\n

And most wonderful of all for me? It\u2019s almost totally\u2026utterly\u2026silent. Blissfully, refreshingly noiseless. It\u2019s really hard to describe how much I needed that quiet these days.<\/p>\n

Even though visibility wasn\u2019t at its prime today (it actually rained just as we arrived), the sun did eventually burst out from behind the cloud cover and showered those of us in the water with glittering shafts of \u00a0sunlight that spotlighted the electric blue stag coral and the fleeting, reeling, schools of tiny silver fish that would surround you out of nowhere.<\/p>\n

And the colours! You\u2019ve never seen such colours! Colours that no artist could hope to truly replicate, blues and purples and sunburst yellows that you\u2019ve never set eyes on before except possibly in the worn pages of National Geographic.<\/p>\n

I cannot for the life of me understand why some people chose not to even go near the water\u2026even in one of the glass bottom boats or the semi-submersible (both of which were included in the cost of the tour). Those crew members who were fortunate enough to be along for the ride (there were only about ten of us in total \u2013 alas, this isn\u2019t a cheap tour, since we had to pay PAX rate, and since it was a full day excursion it would have been difficult to schedule for a lot of people), clambered out of the water only long enough to eat something before slipping back in again.<\/p>\n

This would be one of the many days I have been exceptionally grateful that I chose to buy an underwater camera!<\/p>\n

There was only one unnerving moment; since snorkeling doesn\u2019t always give you the best idea of where you\u2019re going, especially if you\u2019re somewhere with strong currents, it\u2019s surprisingly easy to get disoriented. There\u2019s a sense of rising panic when you surface and realize you have absolutely no clear picture of where you are! Thankfully it turned out I wasn\u2019t too far away from the landing platform and I was within hailing distance of the lifeguard who was only too happy to point me in the right direction. After that I learned to make note of the underwater<\/i> landmarks to avoid getting myself turned around again.<\/p>\n

I was once again reminded of the old Open Ocean exhibition we used to have at our museum back home, and the grainy out-of-date film that proclaimed,<\/p>\n

Look around you, what do you see? The ocean right? Well\u2026not really\u2026that\u2019s just the top<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We got no troubles life is the bubbles Under the sea! My very first contract on the flagship we stopped in Cairns (in the rain, a lot of rain) and in the course of my souvenir shopping I came across … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,72,12,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-below-the-waterline","category-grand-world-voyage-2014","category-historical-sites","category-ports-of-call"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-M6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2982"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2984,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2982\/revisions\/2984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}