Reef Madness

Well on my blog posting plans, tomorrow or the next day quickly became almost a week. However, today may produce two postings. I don’t want to get your hopes up too high, but the perfect storm seems to be brewing. First, I turned in a paper a few hours ago and have very little to do for school now. Second, it has been a fun filled few weeks. Finally, there is not much on TV tonight. (After writing this, the perfect storm hit a glitch in the form of a computer malfunction. Also, CSI was on and so only one posting for today.) Without wasting anymore time, here we go…

I arrived in Cairns on the last day of some sort of festival. Nobody was really able to tell me what it was about, so I just accepted it as an excuse for a party. Cairns is just that type of town. It is filled with youth hostels, bars, and travel agents offering “extreme adventures.” Basically, it has whatever the tourists who have come to see the Great Barrier Reef could want. It even had a dance party float in the town parade.

I was staying in a 6 bed dorm room and was the first to call it a night as my dive trip left early in the morning. For those of you who haven’t stayed in a dorm room of a youth hostel in a party city, let me tell you that it is an experience. One that if I had remembered (as I should have) would probably have convinced me to shell out for a better room. However, I didn’t remember as it had been a few years and I generally believe I sleep through most things. This is partially true and enhanced by the fact that I often have no recollection of being woken up in the night. For example, if you were to call me at say 3am, I would either not remember our conversation at all or remember and vow to get even somehow. Back to the room, so I went to bed around midnight with my alarm set for 6:30am. About an hour or so later someone came in and quickly left. A couple hours later, I woke up and noticed there were several other people in the room. The most notable of whom was the dude across from me trying to tuck a sheet into the top bunk so that it would hang over his bed and provide some privacy for himself and his guest. About an hour after that, someone started knocking. I was the closest to the door, but decided that at 4am I was only getting up if there was a fire. The German girl across from me (in the top bunk above mr. privacy and his guest) is either nicer than me or less patient and eventually got up on the third or fourth set of knocks. Upon opening the door, a drunk English girl apologized for having left her keys in the room. I don’t speak German, but I believe the response had a four-letter English translation. After that, I managed to sleep until my alarm went off. Some people recommend ear plugs for dorms, but I find it a little weird to sleep with ear plugs and then you become that person with ear plugs whose alarm is going off (I have experienced this as well).

Well rested, I was picked up and taken to the shop where I would sign away my life to a dive company. Law school has made signing contracts like this a mixed bag. On one hand I now feel much more obligated to read them. On the other, once you do read them, you realize how ridiculous they are.

After assuming all responsibility for anything that happened anywhere in the Pacific Rim, I headed for a boat that would take me out to the dive boat that would serve as my home for the next three days. The ride out went through some choppy seas. I was smart and took a seasickness pill and therefore was not rocking the bag like most people. Hands free I was able to make jokes and quote Seinfeld saying, “The sea was angry that day my friends.” The Australian and two Italians I initially said it in front of were not impressed, not familiar with Seinfeld, or seasick. Later I found a Conneticutian and we laughed all the way to the Kangaroo Explorer, which was tied to a mooring line 2 ½ hours from shore.

Once on the dive boat, we were given a safety briefing, asked to reconfirm that we had signed our life away, and then outfitted with some gear. After a quick lunch, we jumped in and went for a dive. On my first dive there were a few cool fish, a gigantic clam (several feet in length), and a lot of dead looking coral. Part of it looked dead because it was as a result of coral bleaching, which happens when the water gets warmer from El Nino. Part of it looked dead because we were deep enough that a lot of colors began to fade. We moved dive sites for the afternoon by ended up in a place with rough visibility (approximately 1-2 meters). That said, I still saw a sea turtle and a lion fish and that was pretty cool.

We were supposed to go on a night dive, but the lack of visibility made it unsafe, so I was out of the water until 6am the following morning. I was doing an advanced dive course that required a deep dive, so on the first one for the day we went down to 30 meters. My instructor brought a few things to demonstrate the pressure that exists that far under water. Most notably, she cracked open an egg and the yolk remained intact and we were able to bat it around like a ball.

On the next dive, I had to do some navigation exercises and then spent the rest of the time checking out what was around. This location had tons of fish, some good coral, and was generally quite good. After another dive in the afternoon, the fourth dive of the day was a night dive required for my course. We all got little flashlights and jumped in the water. I found the night dive to be a little unnerving. You swim around and are only able to see the small amount illuminated by your flashlight. Some people describe it as being in outer space. I’m not sure about that, but we did see a little shark which was cool.

The next day I had three more dives and a snorkel before heading back to Cairns. They were all pretty good. I ended up seeing an amazing amount of marine wildlife by the end. It is hard to explain it, but it is a lot like what you see on tv and a great experience.

Back in Cairns, I went to a show called “Reef Teach” which might have been good to see before going out, but was still great. This crazy Irish guy who has been diving for 30 years does a slideshow presentation about the Great Barrier Reef and what you can see there. This guy was a total lunatic and should be on television. I wish I could have recorded some of it.

An excerpt from Salon.com might help paint the picture for you. “The Irishman stalks back and forth across a low plywood platform. He leans forward; he crouches; he stretches tall. His voice ranges from tent revival preacher boom to Monty Python lunatic screech as he veers from thundering pronouncements to the high-pitched tone he uses to talk about the "teeny-tiny microscopic animals" who built the titanic wonder we've all come to this remote place to see: the Great Barrier” Reef. For the entire article go here http://archive.salon.com/travel/feature/2000/03/04/reef/print.html

The rest of my time in Cairns few by. I made a trip up to the touristy rainforest village of Kuranda and also had a night out on the town. It turns out that I was the last person into my new dorm on my last night in town. I wondered who the people were, sleeping so soundly so early in Cairns. After all, it was probably only 2:00 am. At 7:00am when one of them started using an electric razor just above me, that curiosity quickly faded.

With enough youth hostel living to last at least a few weeks, I was happy to be headed for the airport and back to Adelaide.