SWIMMING WITH THE FISHES

Yes...

it's true...

We swam with the fishes.

LOTS of fishes.

THOUSANDS of fishes.

And Sharks, and Octopus, and Jellyfish by the THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS and then there were the stars... and the dancing stars...

3 days, 2 nights on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.

Holy Shit.

Yeah.

So, We headed out on a boat called the Reef Experience which brought us out to a bigger, badder ass boat called the REEF ENCOUNTER. This was our live aboard vessel. during this time Tom and Olga got their full Open Water Scuba certification (better than in a pool), and I got to dive 10 TIMES!!!

If you've never gone SCUBA diving before, you owe it to yourself to experience it. It feels like flying, floating, dreaming all at once. It's like you are in some Alien landscape (the mostly beautiful one, and sometimes scary one, not the terrifying hell driven Alien landscape of the movies.:). Anyway...I suggest everyone do it if you can. Tom and Olga kept saying how this was one of the coolest things ever and how they couldn't believe I hadn't told them how cool it was before. (I think I had, but until you do it you just don't know how awesome it is!)

But I'll do my best to tell you about some of the highlights.

The ship was 2 stories, had cabins, a hot tub, a sundeck and a dining room with couches and tables and a bar (not that there was any drinking, everyone is so tired after a day of diving you goto bed by 10pm! wooo! partay!)

But that's not what it's about. it's about the diving (and snorkeling since there are 6 dive slots in a day and you can only dive 4 times in a day for safety reasons). Diving.

I buddied up with a great guy from Germany, Mathias. So most of the times we were together underwater. We had a similar diving style and communicated well with the hand signals and such you have to use underwater. Sometime I also Dove with Marcus, one of the Dive Master Trainies on the ship. He was super cool (also from Germany!)

On one dive we saw an Octopus sticking its head out of a hole. on another a 5 foot shark sitting on the bottom. On another turtles! 5 turles! swimming, sitting on the reef. There are so many fish in so many colors. The reef itself is brilliant, sparkling, dancing in the sun. It's spectacular. We played with clown fish (think "nemo") in their little waving sea anemonie beds. That are kinda sticky. We pickeup sea sponges, that spray sticky white stuff all over. It was pretty awesome. Generally you don't touch most things, but some things you can. there were giant clams, one that was at least 5 feet across.

And then there were the night dives...

Yep. Leaping into the pitch black ocean with only a flashlight to see (and those of your buddies). It makes something that is already surreal turn totally wild. You can see very little. the lights from the boat hover above like ET's UFO landing. Otherdivers are shafts of light slicing the darkness. And when you get away from the other lights, away from the boat, you can black out your light...

... and the dancing stars appear.

They drift around your hands, around your flippers. it's like flying through some strange galaxy, where stars can move and spin and spiral as you go through them. It's like nothing I've ever seen before. If I made F/X like this ina movie, you would think it was fake. But it's not. It's totally real. The death blasts of millions of tiny plankton, bursting with Bioluminescence. WOW.

And on the way back to the boat, in the dark. SHARKS. Lots of them.

Circling beneath the platform. 5-7 feet long.

Wow.

And for some reason, we weren't scared (until the one swam a few feet below my feet from behind me).

Gray Whalers and White Tip Reef Sharks.

Scary... perhaps.

And no, they don't eat people. :)

And if that were as cool as it got... that would be all you need.

But it gets even BETTER!

6:30am morning dive.

"there's Jelly's in the water"

"Should we wear a wetsuit?"

"No, they're harmless, you can play with them"

So into a floating mass of jellies AS FAR AS YOU COULD SEE.

It was like entering the coolest alien world ever. Floating between these 6-12 inch jelly fish. You could tap the front of them and they would turn. they were going in every direction. And the sunlight glistened through them. I swam below them, looking up at this massive fleet of Jellyfish, the sun going through their clear bodies. Tiny fish swimming around inside them. It was absolutely, amazing.

Now we're back in Cairns. Ready for some dinner and probably white water rafting tomorrow.

But my mind is still underwater... in one of the most amazing places on earth.

Don't miss it, I'm so glad I didn't.

rock on

Craigo

PS: Tom and Olga got their SCUBA certification here... 3 days. 8 dives on the REEF. Screw the pool! :)