Diving the Great Barrier Reef!

So we’re sitting in the airport awaiting our flight from Cairns to Sydney, so exhausted but happy as we just finished our big liveaboard dive trip to the Great Barrier Reef on Mike Ball Dive Expeditions (on the boat Spoilsport)!

We still can’t hardly believe that we were able to accomplish such an amazing dream and goal that we both had… I won’t go into the nitty gritty details, but here’s our trip in a nutshell.

We arrived on the boat 4 nights ago (4 night, 3 day trip), to a very friendly crew of 10 people, and 19 guests, including us. The boat is a huge catamaran with facilities to accommodate that amount of people with cabins, a kitchen, big dining room area, living room/resting area, large sun deck, and scuba gear deck (3 levels in all). Curt and I had a bunk bed room booked (all the double beds were taken already), so our room was small and cozy, but by the end of the trip we hardly noticed as the majority of our time was spent chatting with the other guests, and we made a ton of friends from all over the world!

There were a few other Americans (also expats living in various places), Team Sweden, Team Austria, some Aussies, Canadians, Kiwis and more.

We got in lots of diving (I dove 10 dives, Curt 12 dives), so minus our specialty courses, we are now Master Divers (have 50 or more dives). We also took an underwater photography specialty course while on the boat, which was a ton of fun, too – we both learned a lot and our pictures really show the improvement!

While diving we saw lots of new fish we’ve never seen before, lots of sharks (gray reef, white tips, and black tips), and a lot of cod (something that is unique here in Australia – they’re huge and kind of act like puppy dogs, LOL).

One of our dives on Osprey Reef was a shark feed dive, where the coral creates a natural amphitheater… as that coral is dead they sit you down around to watch it, and we saw maybe 30-40 sharks, cod, and fish of every shape and size vying for a chance at some tuna heads… yummy!

Some of the diving was on shallow coral heads (or bommies, as the Aussies call them from the Aborigines), and some of the dives were in the deep blue with the sand and coral very deep down! Curt had a great time taking lots of pictures with some of our new knowledge, and I had a great time learning it from scratch – worrying about taking photos along with everything ELSE you have to think about down there is very challenging, as it’s pretty difficult!

I did still have my cold the whole time, which was a bummer and hindered me quite a bit. The first couple of dives I had a slight bloody nose, and on the third dive blood filled the bottom of my mask, and kept going as I was doing my 3-minute safety stop I could feel the pressure (and obviously see the blood), and I tell you what, it was the longest 3 minutes of my life (after a dive you should always do a safety stop to avoid decompression sickness, or the Bends, which is a big deal if you get it, so you should never ever bolt to the surface and have to always keep your head about you).

When I finally was clear to surface, I popped up, took off my mask and the extra relief of that pressure brought even more snot and blood out of my nose. I put my hand up to my face and it came back with a TON of blood and stuff and I just lost it and started to cry. Curt was there with me floating obviously calming me down, and the boat was also right there so I wasn’t in any danger, it was just one of those things that scares you a lot.

The silver lining was that the pharmacist in Melbourne who prescribed me some Sudafed with Ibuprofen was also a diver, and told me that he’d gone diving once with a cold and had the same thing happen to him, so I had it in the back of my mind that it was normal for diving with a cold (but again, when it did happen and I experienced it for myself, it still was enough of a shock for it to shake me up).

From then on as my capillaries were sensitive, I didn’t go too deep, but more than that, I was extremely deliberate in the rate of change in my depth, meaning I descended at a very slow rate, and ascended at a very slow rate (even slower than they already advise you to do). I had a bloody nose after every dive (but much more mild than my bloody mask), but I was able to learn the “signals” very well so that we could prevent anything from happening. So that was a huge bummer, but it’s not like I was going to sit out, so we just had to deal with it and I was happy to be able to dive at all.

P.S. After every dive I was checked in on by the staff, and as all of them do this for a living they assured me it was quite normal, and if I was going to insist on diving to do the slow rates of change and I would be ok as it was only for 3 days of diving. I did sit out 2 dives, too, which also helped my body to take care of itself in the times in between. Yesterday, at our very last dive, was the first dive I didn’t have a bloody nose, and even though I’ve still got some drainage and congestion pressure, I’m feeling a lot better.

I can’t wait til we get the pics uploaded, and we also bought a video from the whole trip, so I can’t wait until we can show that to everyone, too – it’s so wonderful and I had tears in my eyes by the end it was so beautiful and a great representation of what we saw on the whole trip!

Curt even entered the SLR photo competition and one 2^nd and 3^rd place for two of his photos, so we were really excited about that! They’re beautiful, too, so stay tuned and we’ll get them uploaded as soon as we can…

This morning we made it to Lizard Island on the boat, where they ferried us to shore to catch a small plane back to the mainland (purposely part of the trip so they can fly you over the reef, and even the dive sites we stopped at all along the way), and that was beyond beautiful. They fly us at 700 feet over the water, so you can see the coral below, and I even saw a sea turtle that popped up for some air and went back below! We also saw a ship wreck from long ago called “Emily’s Wreck,” which is now a rusting and broken down reef and stop over for sea birds, so that was pretty awesome, too! It was the perfect ending to our amazing trip, though I always find it sad (and so did many others on our trip) to say goodbye to new friends that you’ve spent so much time with doing something so special… we all got along famously and I’m sure some paths will cross again in the future.

We dove the Great Barrier Reef, and in the meantime, have fallen in love with Australia. We’re so excited for New Zealand next, but in the meantime, we’re going to take a nap on this next flight as we’re EXHAUSTED!