i did 3 dives today on the outer reef near cairns, australia. diving the great barrier reef was definitely in my top 5 travel goals and it was both awesome-amazing-fantastic and slightly disappointing. slightly disappointing only because it cost way more money and took way more time to get to yet wasn't proportionally better than cozumel or ambergris or roatan.
cairns is a strange town, not at all how i imagined. giant hotels and trendy shopping and travel agencies and white tablecloth restaurants, if you woke up here and didn't know where you were you might not guess australia at first, there's nothing local about it. all the docks are in one tiny section of town about a 15 minute walk from my hotel.
i headed out this morning and was the first to arrive at the boat. it was giant. i was told to show up a little early if i didn't want to stand in line for check-in and i'm so happy i did, there were at least a hundred people and i was sitting in the a/c drinking coffee for about an hour by the time we were ready to leave the dock. the trip to the outer reef was about an hour and a half and we got safety briefings and were split into groups, certified divers, people taking courses and snorkelers. of the 100ish people only about 20 of us were certified, which really surprised me.
we had a choice to go with a buddy or as a guided group for an extra $15 (i already paid about $180 for 3 dives). but since i had no idea where we were i chose guided group for my first dive. it was a group of 6, not too bad. when it was time to get geared up we went to the dive deck and there were sick people laying all over the place and the crew had to move them out of the way, one poor guy had to be carried, he never made it off the boat the entire day, he just puked till there was nothing left and then passed out under a bench for hours. that would suck.
first dive was pretty good, 3 minutes in and i saw the first shark, a white tip reef shark just cruising through. fish, coral, fans, good stuff. a couple out of control divers that the guide had to keep messing with but it was a better situation than in other places, when they were out of air he just sent them to the surface near the boat and the rest of us continued on.
there was a giant napoleon wrasse, wally, that lives near the mooring and that's where the photographer set up camp for all the people that wanted pictures with it. seriously, it was bigger than me and acted like a giant puppy. we weren't allowed to touch it but the crew would grab it by the nose and guide it where they wanted for a good shot.
i had borrowed mark's underwater camera and had it during this dive, got a few minutes of nice pictures, then a couple beads of water crept in. crap. fog. crap. little more water, i was sure the housing was sealed before i got in. crap. i think i owe mark a new camera. crap. i can't even get it to turn on now. but long ago i learned that if i ignore broken electronics for a week or so they will magically start working again, so i'll use my camera in front of it, make it jealous, and it'll be ok. not that i'll ever take it underwater again. don't tell mark.
i didn't get a picture of wally.
we got back on board the boat and were only there long enough to get our tanks refilled, drink some water, and decide if we wanted another group or buddies. i chose buddy and was teamed up with a guy and a girl. first unguided dive ever. i told them that i wasn't a good navigator, couldn't make my way through a town with a perfect grid pattern streets, etc, the guy didn't want to lead, the girl weaseled out by not saying a word and not looking at either of us, so by default i became our group leader. yeah, that's a great plan. whatever, i'll do what i want and they can follow, and if we end up a mile from the boat i don't mind the swim back. the crew had a great system of making sure no one got left behind, they had a list of everyone and the number of dives they were doing and when i stepped on board i was instantly asked to sign my name that i returned from the dive. regardless of how long it takes to get back they won't leave us out there. ok let's go.
the first dive we headed out with the wall on our right so this time i went left. and it was so strange being out there by myself (seemingly, the other 2 were just following behind me) in this enormous space. i couldn't believe they just let anyone go out and make their own way. especially me.
it was another good dive, saw some great stuff, checked on my buddies a couple times, when i tried to get some direction decisions the guy would just shrug and the chick wouldn't even answer, lame. so i just kept going and hoped they had the sense to tell me to turn around if they were low on air. i turned us around a couple minutes shy of our halfway time and then realized we had swum out with the current. oops. file that lesson for future use, too late now. we swim back, slightly shallower, i quit paying any attention to my buddies except to note that they were still behind me, and 15 minutes later i start thinking about where the boat might be. its not like they parked it squarely on the end of the reef. couple more minutes, no boat. turn to ask they guy if he has any idea where the boat is, shrug, ignore him again. couple more minutes, about ready to just do a safety stop and surface wherever we were, and there's wally, welcoming us back. i was so happy to see that big fish.
the guy and i were laughing when we got to the surface, can't believe we found the boat, the girl just swam away and thankfully i never saw her again.
it was lunch time when i got back on (i was the absolute last person in line) and i headed up to the wheel house to eat. i sat with a swedish woman who was there alone and we started chatting, she asked if i would be her buddy for the last dive. i asked her how long she's been diving and she had just gotten certified about 20 minutes ago. hell no. what i dislike most about diving is that normally when someone is low on air the entire group has to surface, i'm not the best diver in the world but usually now i come back with the most air left. i've been on dives where i've had to surface with over half a tank and i'm generally pissed off when that happens, this is too expensive to miss out on 15 minutes because someone is fucking around and wasting their air, or they're just crappy divers. or new divers. queensland rule is that no one can dive solo, if there are only 2 people and one is low both have to surface. so no, i don't want to buddy with a brand new diver. and i had to carefully explain that she didn't want to go out with me. super awkward moment.
there were a couple crew sitting nearby and they stopped their conversation and sat with huge grins on their faces as they watched me squirm my way out of being her buddy. but really, as a brand new diver and the first time in the ocean (all but one dive had been in pools) she needed a guide. worrying about her would totally ruin my last dive.
she gracefully accepted my decline, the boat moved to a new reef, and i got paired with the same guy from the previous dive. they showed us a reef map and told us where we should head, seems easy. i came up with a more comprehensive plan than our first dive together so we could agree before we got in the water and off we went. find the wall, take a left. swim to 150 bar, turn around, explore the bay that the boat is moored in until we're out of time. super.
but it didn't turn out so easy as that. find the wall, that was the first problem. we were swimming over dozens of small reefs just trying to find depth, we spent about 10 minutes at 5 meters and at that point i wasn't sure at all where we were. i got that familiar 'i'm lost' panic pretty early on, the guy not helping me decide where to go at all, and just figured that wherever we end up at the end of our time we could swim back. its not like you can get too confused at the surface, there was one giant boat and miles and miles of nothing else. so screw it, enjoy the dive, worry later. and then we found the wall. another shark, squid, huge pineapple sea cucumbers, giant clams that must have been 3 feet wide, so much crazy stuff. wish i had a camera.
i turned us around fairly soon though so we could find the bay. we didn't have compasses, which i thought of after the first solo dive but forgot to ask for, so we swam and swam and then i knew we weren't going to surface anywhere near the boat. again, who cares. i didn't bother asking the guy where we should turn. and as i found out later, he couldn't even figure out his dive computer, all he had to do was press the one button on it to get readings but he never did. for both dives he went totally blind, he didn't have depth, elapsed time, anything, was just doing what i did.
i tried to make notes of the times swimming in each direction but as i looked at cool stuff i just forgot, that plan didn't work. we had about 5 minutes until we had to do a safety stop and i looked at my buddy and let him know i'm totally lost. he shrugged. i kept going, only a couple minutes left to check stuff out, we never found the bay but we could pretty much swim in small circles the entire time and not see everything anyway so no big deal. and just as i'm signaling my buddy that we have to start going up i see our boat. i have no idea how i found it again, i'm just laughing underwater. how was that possible?
turns out i'm a super navigator. who would have guessed?
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| never thought i'd miss pangas |
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