One Lap of the Americas: Down Under Day 6: Port Douglas and the Great Barrier Reef

Had to get up super early today to catch the 645a shuttle bus over to Port Douglas, from which was scheduled to depart a boat to take us out to the Great Barrier Reef. There is a seemingly infinite number of tour companies, but on a recommendation I had received the day of our flight out to Sydney, I booked our tour with Aristocat, which offered both snorkeling and introductory SCUBA for those without certification.

90 minutes later we arrived in Port Douglas and, after some quick check-in formalities, boarded the boat:

It's the twin-hulled catamaran in the middle.

Aristocat does tours of the Agincourt Ribbon Reefs, on the Outer Great Barrier Reef. They advertise it as being the best; I don't have much point of comparison, but it was definitely pretty amazing! I did three introductory dives (one at each of the three sites we visited), EJ snorkeled at each site, and Omar opted to stay on board, take pictures, and be afraid of fish.

The instructor on board, Yannick, was super helpful and did a great job. After a first couple of nervous minutes, I settled into the routine easily and finally began to notice the surroundings. The Reef really is amazing. I didn't have a housing for my camera, but it's unlikely that pictures would have done it justice anyway. The huge variety (shapes, sizes, colors, behavior) of the fish, the various sessile animals and their reactions to things swimming by them (watching coral retreat is surprisingly amusing), and the bottom-dwellers too -- like nothing I've done before. Awesome experience.

I did some snorkeling after my dive at the first dive site, but at the second one I got up and ate lunch, and after the third I was tired and just wanted to catch some rays on the deck. I ordered photos from the dive photographer and even had them put them on our memory card in hopes that I could attach them to this post, but no such luck -- the iPad doesn't see them! Oh well.