Was on the dive boat from Tuesday morning until Wednesday evening, then out last night (wed night). Dive boat was awesome! Amelia, Indi, and I get there bright and early at 7am, and get on the first boat. We get ushered upstairs, where we wait in the special cabin for people doing the overnight (we affectionately refer to this cabin as "the club"). We boat out for a bit, until we meet up with the overnight boat. There, the regular day divers/snorkelers start their stuff, but we get on a mini boat and head over to the overnight boat. Once there, we go into the beautiful saloon area, which is full of really comfy couches, a bar, a tv area, nice dining tables, etc. We get a briefing, then off to the diving.
It was my first time getting to go without guides, so indi and i were always buddies, and we got to do whatever we wanted. We'd get a briefing at each site, including a description of suggested routes and a look at a map, and then we got to dive however we wanted. It's much more enjoyable than having to follow a guide or being in a big group. amelia chose to snorkel most of it, though she did some intro dives as well.
The diving itself was phenomenal; warm water, high visibility, and all the coral and fish of the barrier reef. I also managed to use my go-pro to great effectiveness, wearing it on my hand and holding it in front of me like Pale Man
schedule the first day was briefing, lunch, dive, new location, afternoon dive, dinner, night dive. in between dives you'd unload/break down your equipment, take a wonderful warm-water shower outside, dry off in the beautiful sun and wind, get into some dry clothes and watch the gopro footage from the previous dive, then it'd be time for the next one. it's a wonderful pattern! we couldn't drink until we were done diving for the day, but then the beers tasted so good at night. and we got to see lots of stars, though the full moon didn't help. and i slept great in the comfy rooms with the gently swaying boat :)
next day was 6:30am dive, breakfast, location change, morning dive, break, afternoon dive after meeting with the boat for the next crew of overnighters, then a final snorkel session before heading off. we had to settle our tab before that, so i pre-ordered 7 beers for the 3 of us for as soon as we finished :) then on the boat ride back they gave us free wine. woop!
at some point i'll get around to editing and youtubing the dive videos, as there was some fun stuff. and we got some great photos from the underwater photographer, which i'll share too.
that night, we just hit up the local bars in cairns, and hung out a bit with some of the crew from our trip who had just gotten off duty for a few days. happy hour was regular, then we found some late night places for a wednesday night in cairns. crashed at our hotel, now preparing for our overnight in auckland, then on to queenstown, for which we've booked nothing except our first night's stay and a rental car for the week.
(photos didn't sync for a few days, so catching up a bit below)
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| our team hotel in coffs. undependable hot water, no functioning wifi, but it was our little slice of muddy paradise |
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| the beautiful beach right outside our hotel |
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| a selfie _of_ a selfie?! indi surprised me at the beach |
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| Team USA milling about in our tent |
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| getting ready for games, woo |
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| indi being excited to be with team USA |
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| driving around in the bus, probably to or from a rained out game |
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| on our day off (due to bad weather) we went 9-pin bowling. great artwork at the bowling alley, eh? |
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| while at the bowling alley, we ran into Team China and challenged them to a bowling duel. we won, and indi was all like "ew, china" |
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| take that, team china! |
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| smashed 'em; no big deal |
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| the local pub that was sponsoring team usa; where we ate every morning, night, and day. |
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| indi's all like "ew" |
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| on the bus with team usa, driving back up to brisbane |
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| what a nerd |
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| you can tell the cairn airport gets a lot of asians, because the toilets need to explicitly indicate you should sit on them, not stand on them. |
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| cairns harbor area has a beautiful public wading pool. amelia and indi agree. |
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| a pool destined to be flopped in by drunk people |
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| though, as we discovered last night (while drunk), it closes off and you're not supposed to go in it after hours. |
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| in da club, on our way to the overnight ship |
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| i took it upon myself to give my swim trunks a much needed shortening, so here i am modeling them. the boat's swaying made it pretty hard to stand like this, so indi has a video in which i appear to just randomly fall over. |
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| on the sun deck of our sweet ship. still have that touch farmer's tan... |
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| some sharks and fish swimming around the boat in the evening. |
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| apparently cairns harbor has some epic tidal issues, because this whole bay was just mud, we presume because of low tide. |
