A Birthday to Remember: The Great Barrier Reef

I have a bit of intrim stuff to talk about re: Alice Springs and Cairns, but I’ll get to that later. I’ve been saying lately that I don’t really ‘get’ the whole “time moves forward in a linear fashion” idea that is so persistent today, so it’s only fit that I carry this philosophy into my blogging. The reef trip is high on my mind at the moment, so it’s the reef trip that you’ll hear about first. I don’t have a lot of pictures for this - I would have had to rent a digital camera for use underwater, and then I would have been worrying about it the whole time. And you probably know what the great barrier reef looks like from documentaries (or you could google it) - there’s no way that I can capture the awesomeness of actually being there on (digital) film.

First off, thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes in one form or another - I was totally cut off from civilization ON my actual birthday, but when I got back in town the next day my inbox was positively flooded with messages. Thank you! It was a little strange to celebrate a birthday away from home for the first time, and hearing from all of my friends really made me feel at home, even though 16,000 though I’m kilometers away.

On Monday I was picked up at 8AM and after a bit of form-filling-out and general info, we were loaded onto a small day boat (called the Sunkist) and shipped out. It was a somewhat rocky 2-hour trip to the big dive boat which lives out on the reef, called the Kangaroo Explorer.

This 25 meter catamaran was going to be our home for the next three days. We hopped on board and made our way up to the sundeck (though, for reasons that will become clear shortly, we called it the “cloud deck” or the “wind deck” for the duration of the trip) for a quick briefing about how things were going to operate.

Our shoes were basically stored away for the duration of the trip - I didn’t put my sneakers back on until we were back on dry land again. Then we had a quick tour of the ship. The middle deck was where my cabin was, and functioned as a general storage space for wetsuits, flippers, and a makeshift drying line for towels and swimsuits.

All the action happened down on the dive deck, where everybody got ready to jump in for a dive or a snorkel.

Also on this level is the saloon, where we ate meals and could booze it up in the evenings (though nobody actually did - everybody was always too wiped out and dehydrated to want to drink at night.)  We were allocated a cabin (I had a bed in a 4-share cabin, which had its own bathroom and shower, yay!).

The days basically went like this:

5:30AM - Wake up call.

6 AM - Dive / snorkel time.

7 AM - Breakfast.

8 AM - Dive / snorkel time.

11AM - Sunkist arrives with passengers.

11:30 - Dive / snorkel time.

Noon - Lunch.

1PM - Dive / snorkel time.

2:30 - Sunkist departs with passengers.

3 PM - Afternoon tea.

4 PM - Dive / snorkel time.

6 PM - Dinner.

7:30 -  Night dive.

8:30 - Sit sleepily in the saloon for a while, then crawl, exhausted, into bed.

After lunch I got ready and went on the 1pm snorkel. It was cloudy and a bit windy, and the water was pretty choppy, but a guide went with us and explained a few tips about snorkelling before we went, so I felt pretty good about it. It took us a few minutes just to get out to a good snorkelling area - we were going against the current so that it would be an easy trip back to the boat when we were finished. I was using the snorkel for some of this time, though it’s sometimes hard to follow someone with a snorkel because if you look up/forward instead of down, the snorkel suddenly becomes a big ol’ straw and you find yourself breathing salt water. At this point we were in water that was 5-6 meters deep, so the coral was quite a ways below us.

Then suddenly it was RIGHT THERE - just a meter below the surface. It completely took me by surprise. It was beautiful - amazingly varied, colourful, and just teeming with fish. At that moment I realized that this trip was COMPLETELY going to be worth it.

We spent about half an hour out snorkelling, though the choppy water was a little distracting sometimes because you kept having to purge the snorkel by blowing into it with a “TOO!” kind of sound. When we got back to the boat the woman who’d been guiding us out there asked if we were interested in doing an introductory dive, and my response was a HELL YES. 

So she set me up with an instructor who got some medical information from me and then did her best to scare me out of doing anything stupid by explaining about how going up too quickly can give you “the bends” and how if you hold your breath while you surface you might pop your lungs. FUN! I will admit, hearing about nitrogen bubbles in my blood kind of freaked me out. But I knew they wouldn’t let people do this kind of thing if  it wasn’t REASONABLY safe for the average non-stupid individual, so I decided to go for it.

First things first: the wetsuit. I tried one but it was too small, so they gave me the biggest size they have. It was tight, and I needed someone else’s help to get it on - basically I pulled the zipper closed while they zipped up. It was like being pressed into a sausage roll. Apparently this is completely normal - she actually said that it was a little LOOSE on me! Unfortunately it wasn’t a wonderful fit through the arms, as it was obviously designed for a big tall man to wear and I make only a MEDIUM height man, at best. It was kind of funny, actually - water tended to collect in my arms, and when I got out liters of warm water would come trickling out at the wrists.

I am DEAD SEXY.

Then they had to weight me down. I am super super buoyant thanks to my ample fat reserves, and the salt water holds me up VERY well. Which is great for floating, but not so great for diving. They fitted me with TWO weight belts, and once I was in the water they had to add another FOUR weights to get me down under the water with any kind of ease. Then they strapped me into a vest and got me set up with a nice full tank of oxygen, which was nice of them, because me and oxygen get along real well. I strapped on the ol’ fins and mask, and with a big step toward the horizon I splashed into the water and was ready to go.

My instructor had me practice a few skills first - I had to be able to make my ears pop by holding my nose and blowing (they call this “equalizing”). I had to do this frequently under the water as I went deeper. I had to be able to get water out of my mask while underwater (you tip it up slightly and blow through your nose - this also equalizes the pressure in the mask, preventing your face from getting sucked into it and giving you black eyes. Jerry Seinfeld obviously didn’t know how to do that properly.) You also had to be able to take your mouthpiece out and put it back in underwater, while continuing to let your breath out (rule number one of diving: never hold your breath.) No problem. So my instructor let the air out of my vest and down we went for my first dive.

It. Was. AMAZING. What a cool feeling, being completely surrounded by water. We swam together for a bit with her holding my hand, but after just a couple of minutes she let me go so I could follow her of my own accord. It’s almost like watching an interactive silent film - all you can hear are your own sounds, your breathing and the sound of water splashing against your ears. The bubbles from your exhalation rush past your ears, and it’s quite loud - it took a little while to get used to it. We went around, swam under the boat, picked up sea cucumbers (they’re SO SOFT and squishy!) and looked at the little clown fish swimming around in an anemone. They are SO CUTE, their little mouths open and close while they flitter around and they look like they’re smiling. No wonder they chose those fish to be the main characters of “Finding Nemo” (they’re a veritable celebrity at the reef now, everybody wants to find “Neemos”).

The certified divers were following Renaldo, a diving instructor and filmmaker, as he was filming various things to be made into a film. He also made a film the next day, when he personally took me out for another introductory dive - he’s so familiar with the reef that he was able to find me his favourite turtle so we could give him a scratch on the shell (apparently they like that because it cleans the shell, and they’re big ol’ hams with the divers nowadays because they know we’ll do it for them.) We also saw two flatheads together, fish that lay on the sand at the bottom and bury themselves so they’re almost invisible. And he stuck what I think was a sea cucumber to my hand - very weird!!

They had a night dive that night, so I decided to go on that one as well. It was very different - most of the little fish were hiding away, and we saw some really interesting bigger fish. I was a little disoriented, though, because you can only see where your flashlight reaches, and I kept bumping into rocks and stuff. I think I would enjoy it better once I had more experience.

If I had known I was going to like diving so much, I would have signed up for a course and gotten my certification for open water diving. Then I could have maybe stayed for an extra day and done some dives that went a little farther away from the boat. I also started to get frustrated with the fact that I wasn’t allowed to touch my own equipment - on an “intro dive” you are basically in the hands of  your guide. Which was fine at first, but I really wanted to learn more and become more comfortable IN the equipment and USING the equipment. Oh well, now I know.

I went on four dives all-told, two on the first day and two the next day, on my birthday. When everybody found out that it was my birthday, they arranged with the chef (who is from Montreal) to have him bake me a cake! They brought it out to me after supper and surprised me by singing “Happy Birthday”. I was really touched. They didn’t have candles or icing or anything, but that was fine by me - it was a nice rich chocolate cake, and there was ice cream, too. After that I had a couple of beers, but even though I had been trying really hard to keep hydrated that day, I still wasn’t feeling up for more than that.

Only one dive gave me a problem, and this was to be my fifth and last one, on the last day. First of all, it was with an instructor who had JUST come onboard, so he didn’t know me at all - that’s always a little nervewracking. We had some issues getting my weight belt sorted out as a result of that. Once I got in the water, I realized that it was REALLY choppy - far worse than it had been in previous days. It also had a really wicked current that immediately sucked me a fair distance from the boat - I literally had to grab a line and pull myself over to the instructor and the other intro divers.

Because it was so rough I was using the regulator for oxygen, but the instructor told me to switch to the snorkel to save air. Unfortunately I IMMEDIATELY was breathing salt water, and it was coming so hard and fast that I couldn’t even get enough of a breath to purge it. The instructor started trying to explain to me how to purge it, which annoyed me because I’d been snorkelling a few times and DID know how, but it’s not his fault - he was kind of stressed, since he’d had pretty much no notice before he was handed three intro divers to take out in fairly rough conditions.

Due to all of the above, I was getting upset. And when I get upset, my breathing gets kind of wonky. Normally I would just grit my teeth and power through it, and all would come out fine. But I knew that a breathing problem was NOT the kind of thing to start a dive with, and that it would be irresponsible fo me to claim that I was “OK” to go down in my current state. So I bowed out of the dive. The guy who was helping me get back out of the water was totally encouraging. “You did the right thing,” he said. “The third rule of diving is, ‘never do anything you’re not comfortable with’.” Amen to that. I was still kind of annoyed at myself for a while for GETTING upset, but I never regretted coming out of the water on account of it.

That’s the kind of situation when it would have been nice to be in control of myself - I could have just gone straight down and gotten out of both the choppy water and the current. Things are always much calmer beneath the surface, and it would have been no problem once I was down there. I hope I have the opportunity to dive again, I really enjoyed it and it made me want to learn a lot more about the reef and the wildlife there so that I could more thoroughly enjoy it.

I met some really nice people too - particularly D and C, a couple from Newcastle (north of Sydney) who had been diving together for a little while. They were a lot of fun. I actually saw them again this morning while I was having a coffee. They’d stayed for a night at a hostel called “The Asylum” for the sole reason that it would be cool to say that you’d stayed at “The Asylum”. I can even get some mileage out of it, myself. “So I met this really nice couple, then they got dropped off at the Asylum…”

Sleeping was a little difficult the first night - it was hard to get used to the constant rocking of the boat. The second night was fine, though. There is something intensely tiring about the whole process of going for a snorkel or a dive. Not the least of this is from getting the wetsuit on - which, on the very last occasion that I tried, I managed to do  ALL BY MYSELF!! I allowed myself to sleep through the very early morning dive on both days, though I am wishing that I had gotten up for at least one of them. That’s the kind of experience you can really brag to people about. “I got up at FIVE THIRTY to go diving!”

All in all, it was a great way to turn 25, even though the weather was cloudy and windy and I didn’t get to see a shark. (Sharks and divers get along well in these parts. They are completely uninterested in attacking humans, though on night dives they ARE interested in divers’ flashlights.) Oh well - all the more reason to come back again some day.

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