Revelling in the Reef!

May 18 - 22nd

From Magnetic Island we travelled the 550 kms or so back up North to Port Douglas, about 60kms North of Cairns. Known as the "Village by the Sea" Port Douglas is a lovely little town with lots of shops and restaurants and a beautiful powder sand beach that's about 4 miles long (rather unimaginatively known as 4 Mile Beach).

Here we're staying in a comfortable apartment with direct access to the beach and within walking distance to the harbour and town. This is our second "home swop" in Australia. The owners of this apartment will stay in our Cyprus home sometime next year. Great system! 

Tuesday 21st May was an awesome day! We fulfilled one of our long held dreams and went on a boat trip to the Barrier Reef. Port Douglas is the nearest town to the reef so it was an easy one and a half hour boat trip to travel the 50kms to and from the reef. We were incredibly lucky with the weather which has been a bit windy of late but it was calm and sunny so no sea sickness. Even better there were only 15 of us on a boat that normally takes 38 so it was a very personalised, relaxed and informative trip. There are several operators and they all charge quite a lot of money for this trip but we'd recommend going with "Calypso". They run snorkel only trips for non divers like us so you don't waste time trying to please both divers and snorkelers. The crew on our boat, Chris and Ben were really well informed about the reef and its inhabitants. 

We also had a chance to chat to our fellow snorkelers on the journey out and back. Interesting lot. We were the only ones from the UK (always nice), two lots of Kiwis (one a dairy, the other a sheep farmer) although one was married to an English lady, an American couple who immediately invited us to visit them when we were in the US (sadly we won't have time on this trip) and several Aussies. A good mix and we all got on well.



We've been really lucky previously and snorkeled in some fantastic places, particularly the Maldives and British Virgin Islands. Fair to say that nowhere has ever matched the Maldives but the Barrier Reef came pretty close in terms of fish and had better and more varied coral. Quite a relief as we'd heard so much about the dire impact that global warming is having on the coral. We saw some dead stuff but lots more that appeared to be thriving so hopefully the restoration programme is working. 
 
Before we took our first plunge into the sea, we ladies learnt a new dance! We all opted to wear wet suits as even in the warmest water, after an hour or so you do tend to feel cold. Ben was handing these out and got the men's sizes sorted pretty accurately but always underestimated the size needed for the ladies. Most of tried three sizes on before getting a fit but only after we'd perfected the "wet suit wiggle". Very reminiscent of a fitting room in a skinny jeans shop!

We stopped at three spots on the Outer Reef, all around Opal Reef. Chris took us on a snorkeling tour at the last site, free diving down to the bottom to bring up sea cucumbers and to show us examples of soft and hard coral and different types of fish. Nature's so clever! We saw several examples of fish who begin life as females and the dominant female then becomes a male and vice versa.We also saw how coral emits a sort of sticky juice when it's out of the water. This acts as a sun cream, allowing the coral to survive at low tide or when it's no covered by sea.


At our first stop we were greeted by a rather large Hump Head Wrasse (fish) nicknamed Angus. He's so tame that he came right up the steps of the boat to
have his tummy and head tickled! Apparently he's the only male in a group of 50 adoring females. No wonder he seemed happy!

Angus, a fish with 50 wives!

Difficult to describe the feeling of sheer wonder when you plunge out into the open sea, get your head down and see what lies under the surface. By hanging loose above an area of coral for a while you see so much life both in the coral itself and all the fish and other life around. We've all seen the wildlife programmes but when you're actually there it is such a wonderful feeling! Very difficult to drag yourself away and move onto the next stop. In the words of Mr Blomfield - "Oh the light"!

We took lots of pictures and they probably don't do the reef justice but here's a selection. 

A giant clam

Mature blue parrot fish. The tale gives his age away!

Various types of soft and hard coral

 

A big red sea cucumber - its mouth is also its bum!

Look hard and you'll see the Angel fish

Yellow fish -not sure what type!

Rounded the day off in the Combined Service Mens Club! We've been to several variants of these clubs in Australia and all serve good food at reasonable prices. This one also has the benefit of being right on the water so a lovely place to complete a day that we'll remember for many years to come. We are so lucky.