Lecture Recess: Cairns Trip

Last Friday was the beginning of our lecture recess, a sort of spring break (since, after all, this is the Australian spring semester). After my lab on Friday, five of my friends and I took the train from Townsville to Cairns, a city about 6 hours north of us. It is known for its proximity to the Great Barrier Reef, and its tourism industry takes millions of visitors each year on reef trips.

Waiting for the train:

We got into Cairns around 8, walked to our hostel, Global Backpackers, and went to get our free "dinner" promised by the hostel. It turned out to be about 6 spaghetti noodles on a plate, with a teaspoon of sauce. It seemed like someone was playing a joke on us, but I guess that's what you get for $16/night! The next morning, bright and early, we headed out to our liveaboard boat! Basically, a huge boat is anchored on the reef, and a little day-tripper boat shuttles people back and forth every day. We were staying for 3 days and 2 nights. You dive right off the back of the big boat, which also has cabins, a "saloon" where all meals are provided, and a sundeck for hanging out.

Our cabin

The five of us (Hannah, Maren, Alicia, me, and Tom) from JCU aboard the Kangaroo explorer!

We were going to do ten dives in three days: 3 the first day, 4 the second, and 3 the third. All of us except Hannah were just open-water certified (Hannah has completed all certifications possible, and now is an Instructor - it was very handy to have her as a free guide! She took care of most of the navigation when we were underwater by ourselves) but Alicia, Maren, and I were getting our Advanced certification on the boat, along with a couple from New South Wales, Australia:

Our advanced class in the saloon with Brendan, our instructor

Getting advanced certified entailed a deep dive (30 meters, or about 100 feet), a night dive, and a navigation dive, along with our choice of two other specialty dives - I chose "boat" (instead of entering the water directly from the dive deck, they took us out in a small boat and we had to roll backwards off the edge into the water), and underwater naturalist (where I just had to identify different fish). The deep dive was not super different from a regular dive (open water divers are certified to 18 meters, or about 60 feet) except a little darker and colder. Brendan, our instructor, cracked an egg underwater and the yolk remained intact, showing us the increased pressure down there. As we were passing the yolk around, a huge fish was hovering over our shoulders eyeing it, and as soon as it got far enough away, the fish gobbled it down! The night dives (we did 2, one with Brendan and one by ourselves) were awesome - a huge red bass followed us around because he had learned that our flashlights would illuminate little fish that he could eat. We saw a sea turtle on one of the night dives, and a lionfish. For the last few minutes, Brendan made us turn our flashlights off, and our eyes adjusted just like walking at night. There were bio-luminescent particles in the water, so with every fin stroke the water lit up like fairy dust. SO COOL! The navigation dive was difficult, but my dive buddy was very helpful. The rest of the dives we were free to wander around in pairs (or our case, a group of five) and we saw SO many different kinds of fish. We saw sharks, a barracuda named Barry, and about four sea turtles! I got to scratch one of the sea turtles on the back. Some of the highlights:

Lionfish

Sea Turtle!!

Holding a sea cucumber - its tube feet would suction to your hand!

Clownfish - we found nemo!

Me with a giant clam

Me underwater

Pufferfish, I think

Fin blisters

After our trip ended, Alicia, Hannah, and I spent two nights in the city of Cairns in a hostel. We upgraded a little from Global and stayed at Gilligans, which was a good decision (the free meal was slightly bigger, and the rooms were SO much nicer). In our hostel room we stayed with 2 girls from London and 2 guys, Ian and Erik, from Nevada, who we got along with very well. Cairns was a lot of fun, and is full of international backpackers. On Tuesday night we went on a pub crawl, which included transportation around the city on a double decker party bus. We met a lot of people from all over the world, which was really fun. We also went souvenir shopping and explored the city.

Hannah, Alicia, and I

Our new friends from the hostel, Ian and Erik (with Alicia)

Double decker bus

I had SO much fun on this trip, and look forward to doing more travelling after classes get out! I was definately bitten by the travelling bug this week! But for now, we have a month left of classes, then a week of study vacation and 2 weeks of finals. Then, my time at JCU is over! It went super fast, and I'm a little sad it is already drawing to a close. I plan on travelling for a few weeks by myself after finals, then will be heading home in time for Christmas. In the next few weeks I am looking forward to diving a shipwreck off the coast of Townsville, which supposedly has HUGE monster fish and is amazing, as well as a backpacking trip on Hinchinbrook Island with my friend Maren. Should be an exciting next few months!