Last weekend was a weekend from heaven. I went with a local dive shop, Remote Area Dive, consisting of 8 divers including my friends Morgan and Scott("the americans") and 5 dive crew people.
We had to be up at 530am to be picked up by the dive shop. Of course the night before was our townhouse party so it was the worst night ever to want to get to bed early. I set my alarm for 430 so that I could wake up, maybe have a shower, and be ready. Naturally, my alarm never went off, but somehow my body woke up at 5am anyway so I was OK. I opened my balcony door to see how dark/cold it was that morning. To my surprise a delightful smell of beer and strange noise of drunken voices greeted me, the party I guess wasn't over. Crazy Australians.
We had to drive about an hour and a half to Ingham, a town North of Townsville, where we would catch a boat out to the island we would be staying on. To my happiness, breakfast was provided and a good hour nap awaited me. When we finally got to Ingham we had to take a small PWC to the bigger boat (maybe 40 ft. long). It was a very bumpy 30 minute ride across the ocean to the island, fortunately so bumpy that I didn't get sea sick. That proved to be consistent for the whole trip. The view was stunning--open ocean for as far as your eyes could see-except forward where the islands were. The island we were staying on is called Pelorus Island, one island of a chain of islands that make up the Palm Islands.
We had to take the dingy boat into the island because as you can imagine around the island was rather shallow. This was fairly entertaining as we had to anchor the big boat, which came out of the sediment several times. After choosing our tents (got one to myself!) and throwing in our swags (the most comfortable sleeping bag in the world!) we suited up for our first dive!! WOHOO!
I didn't mention that for Scott and I this was also an advanced certification dive course, Morgan wasn't interested in this quite yet though. So our first dive we practiced normal open water skills--clearing our masks, sharing air, neutral buoyancy etc. Then we did an underwater naturalist tour--basically swim around and enjoy nature (but DO NOT touch). As you can see from the pictures it was beautiful, loaded with corals and fish! On our surface interval the boat skipper let us jump off of the roof into the ocean. This was totally cool. Then we got back in the water for a second dive which was our underwater navigation dive. We each had to practice kick cycles and then apply it to navigating our way in a square. we all did well and even got a fist pump from the instructor (I assume this to be a good thing). Then we just used up our tanks on some more underwater exploring. Saw some cool fish, nudibranchs and even a sea sponge! This was cool because the instructor picked it up and we got to hold it. It was kind of soft and slimy like Willy (the Wrasse in Cairns). I LOVED THIS, its so cool to be able to interact with the underwater creatures!
At this point we were starving divers and went back to the island for lunch. Let me tell you, some days it really pays to be a vegetarian. The food was delicious! I got a whole quiche pie to myself, an entire avacado(delicious!) and some random veggies. YUM! We sat around and chatted each other up for a while, I guess my funny side came out and people started to realize what a joker I am (more to come on that later). The Americans and I decided to explore the island--we were told there was a "goat trail" up the mountain that we could go on. Oh ya, there were goats on the island! Little and wicked cute! Anyway the goat trail turned out to be a real mess, omg. I was in my Jesus sandals and the Americans were in their watershoes, but we definetly should have been in proper hiking boots. The path was really nonexistent, we kind of played a guessing game as to where the path actually was, avoiding spots with huge spider webs and even larger actual spiders. We finally made it to one huge bolder, a good look out point. But i made the executive decision that a better lookout point was instore for us a bit higher. I should mention at this point that there are crazy ants all over the place here that get on you and bite you. They were all over me and my Jesus sandals. Ouch ouch ouch!! We climbed higher and finally found a satisfying look out point--we could see the boat and the beautiful vast ocean. We thought the hike up was miserable, but the hike down was worse. Thinking we could just wing it on the whole path thing we ended up in a thicket full of palm size spiders,it was an absolute nightmare. To top it off as I was running away from two ginormous spiders I ran into a plant infested by the nasty ants and they were soooooooooooo mad at me. Morgan would swear I had 10 on my back and they were ALL biting me. She smacked my back as hard as she could--it was probably the most horrible experience I've had in a while.
We all rushed into the water upon making it back to camp. Utterly refreshing, perfect! While we were just relaxing in the water out in the distance Morgan and I saw a huge splash in the water and a huge tail flick out. WOOOOOOOOAHHH. We think it was a whale or something. Then a few minutes later we saw bubbles out of the water and fish jumping out repeatedly. This occured in several other places in the next half hour. Somebody, and somebody big was out there feeding. How sweet is that??
After a nice stroll down the beach to try to get a better look at the point where we first saw the huge tail, it was time to go on our night dive!!! Wicked. This was an awesome dive. We saw a squid darting around in the glow of our lights--it even ran into our instructor. Then we swam around a few reefs and a shark swam between my legs!!! Don't get your panties in a bunch, it was just a reef shark, maybe 3 feet long. But it still spooked me a bit! Cool, hey? We ID'ed it later as a white tip reef shark (though I've actually only heard of black tipped reef sharks, oh well). What else? Lots of cool fish obviously, overall a REALLY cool and non-stressful night dive. I wish you were there dad!
Dinner awaited us after the night dive, some yummy veggie curry for me. Then we played around with marshmallows. The Australians have two flavors --white and red (raspberry perhaps?) and they are really small. Americans are definetly better but oh well. This is where my goofiness came in. People weren't really talking so I took it upon myself to lighten up the mood. I made a contest to see who could get the most golden brown 'shmellow. It was only two of the dive crew that actually participated but it was quite fun and entertaining. After they failed miserably for a while I decided to enter my own contest. Then one of the dive crew found a stick with tons of branches and decided to stick a marshmallow on each one of them, it didn't work so well but everyone got a marshmallow off of it. Of course this led into a fluffy bunny contest, where you put as many marshmallows into your mouth and each time say fluffy bunny. One kid bet I could get 22. Pathetically and drool covered I made it to 5. Fail. It was a fun night.
For those of you that think I'm long winded I'll stop here with this adventure. For those who are entertained still --day two awaits you in my next post. cya there : )
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