Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef

One of the reasons we chose to visit Australia was to go diving in the Great Barrier Reef. It had been a dream of Chris' for a long time, and both of us enjoy diving. Chris was certified as a Scuba Diver in Mexico, but that was almost ten years ago, so he opted to redo the course with Kim. In fact, given the quality of instruction available in Australia, we both decided to go straight through to the Advanced Open Water certification. The major difference between the two certifications is the first carries a depth limit of 18m (~60ft) while the second goes up to 30m (~10ft) and the second includes some experience with a variety of diving specialties. Both certifications are though PADI. Diving being the impetus for our trip it was the first thing we did and what we spent the majority of our time doing.

As noted in our previous post we arrived in Cairns on the 9th of August. We spent the afternoon getting lunch, going to the grocery store, and generally settling in. We stayed in another AirBnB so we had a kitchen again, which was nice because Cairns is just as expensive as Sydney, but the quality of food isn't great. Cairns is basically a beach town. With a population of only about 150,000 the entire city is basically supported by the tourism industry. The food is about what you would find in many American beach towns - burgers and a handful of "ethnic" restaurants and every single one of them is overpriced - even for Australia. 

Our Air BnB in Cairns. A simple beach house open to the outside air!

A picture of the Cairns Harbor at sunset.

It was nice to have a slow day because we started the pool component of our dive training at 8am on Wednesday morning. The only person in the class besides Chris and I was a 19 year old German girl named Julia who was taking time off to travel the world before she started university. As we saw throughout our trip this is a popular option for many people who use "working holiday" visas to take jobs at coffee shops and the like while traveling for a year or two in a country. 

The pool and classroom portion of the course consisted of five video lessons with worksheets, four quizzes, a final exam, and a variety of pool based skills like learning to share air underwater or how to empty a flooded mask. We took the whole day on Wednesday, but given that there were only three of us (class sizes are more typically closer to ten) we made pretty quick work of the material and only needed a half day on Thursday. That gave Chris and I the opportunity to visit the mall in the afternoon - we each picked up a rash guard and spandex to provide a little extra warmth under our wetsuits and Kim chopped off all of her hair because she was tired of it getting tangled in her mask. 

Friday morning we embarked on a four day live-aboard trip through the great barrier reef on the Cairns Dive Center's boat - the Kangaroo Explorer. Its a medium size ship that hosts about 9 crew and dive professionals and up to 40 guests at a time. It has a kitchen, water desalinater, and hot water heater so it doesn't have to come to port very often and passengers are taken out to it on a smaller day boat. The day boat, called the Reefkist, was the bumpiest ride we have ever been on. Kim, who is no stranger to boats, managed to get seasick. The Kangaroo Explorer, or KE was much smoother. 

The Kangaroo Explorer.

We did a total of 12 dives in our four days aboard the boat including four open water training dives, three free dives, and five "adventure dives" which are those needed to qualify for the advanced certification. In addition to the navigation dive and the deep dive, which are required, we chose to do the night dive, the drift dive, and the peak performance buoyancy dive. All of the dives were very interesting - and got to see tons of cool fish while we were completing our required skills, but the peak performance buoyancy dive was definitely the most fun. It helps the diver to understand maneuvering underwater with gear on and involves swimming through hoops and hovering upside down. Some of the volunteers on the boat, young people who help cook and clean in return for free diving, joined us on the dive and it was fun to compete with them. 

Living on the boat in close quarters wasn't too bad - we did get to have our own room - but there wasn't enough hot water for more than one five minute shower a day - which isn't enough when you dive four times in a day and you're constantly freezing! Cairns was certainly warmer than Sydney - in the mid 80s, but the water temp was mid to low seventies and that can feel pretty cold! There was no wifi on the boat (which is partially why we're catching up on blogs now) but it gave us time to get to know some of the other passengers and volunteers aboard. I'm not sure that I would recommend that particular boat to older or more experienced divers, some of whom were on the boat, but it's great for young people who don't mind being a little light on comforts. One of our dive instructors was 26 and the other was 19. I think the average age of the dive masters and crew was about 25. 

Once we were back in Cairns we took a couple of days to allow our bodies to redissolve all of our nitrogen, and we took the last day before we left to see waterfalls. The Daintree rainforest, which surrounds Cairns is home to spectacular waterfalls, of which we saw the Babinda Boulders, Josephine Falls, and the Milla Milla Falls. We drove through the tablelands, which is the area the rainforest has been cleared from and is now used for farming, visited the curtain fig tree, the Milanda Environmental Park, and lake Echam, as well as did some wild platypus spotting. The waterfall trip was a blast, and it was a good end to our trip.

The waterfall tour is what we are going to remember as the end anyway, as getting up at 4am for a 6am flight out of Cairns wasn't the most fun. Additionally there were only three check in agents for about 200 early morning Quantas passengers so we spent a full hour in line to check in, resulting in a sprint through the airport to make our flight. Good thing we didn't have any checked luggage! Once we got to Sydney we only had half an hour to make the boarding time  for our connection so we got to sprint through that airport as well. Luckily we had more time in the Singapore airport and made it home to HCMC without issue. 

Thanks for following along with our adventures! Please feel free to leave any comments or questions in the comment box, or to drop us a line via email. We will be updating soon about continued life in Vietnam after our brief "summer vacation".

-Kim and Chris

P.S. Please note that this trip to Australia was entirely personally funded. All fundraised money is used exclusively for missionary activities.