Cairns: Great Barrier Reef

On friday and satruday I was on the road, driving north to Cape Tribulation and Cooktown. Drove about 300kms along the coast and Cooktown was actually pretty nice! After passing Cape Tribulation, the road turned into something like a rollercoaster which huge gradients up and down for several dozen KM’s. I never saw the Pajiero sweating and suffering like today. On the road I passed another car, which winked me to stop. He asked how far it is to the next city, cause his car lost the “turbo” and doesn’t have the power anymore to climb the severe hills. He stucked there in the jungle (haha) and thankfully i didnt face the same circumstances, when I drove back to cairns on the same road.

 

Just came back from the two day dive trip at the Great Barrier Reef and it was much better than expected. As I reduced my expectations to exactly zero point zero, which means dead corals, a few disabled annoying fishes, and a bunch of beginner divers which destroy left and right beside me the reef like typhoons under the water and reduce the visability to 2 meters. So based on this, the trip was an absolute success J.

Well I guess diving in Australia is compared to other countries anyway different. Here, a dive boat with 100 or 200 divers on a boat is average. Thankfully I found a boat that was limited to about 50 divers, which were reduced to about 30, when we were transferred to the liveaboard (the boat that has facilities for overnight trips). So since the transfer to that boat the space per person increased and the feeling, being in an overcrowded prison somewhere in Afghanistan disappeared. And even underwater there was very seldom the situation seeing other divers except the buddy.

The main difference is, that the divers here were allowed to dive without a guide. So they can make their own buddy teams and dive the own route and speed. I teamed up with another swiss guy, Johann. He was there with his wife, who was on the boat for snorkeling. He had about the same amount of dives and therefore the diving was great. We always hurried on gearing up the dive equipment, so that we were the first divers in the water and therefore had the best chance seeing the bigger fishes.

The last years I have heard and read several times, that the corals here are about to bleach out more and more. And it is acutally really like that. Huge fields have already completely died and look like a coral disposal area. But there are still big areas, where the corals are awesome and the especially the diversity and amount of small fish is great.


Now im sitting in McDonalds somewhere in the middle of cairns and some minutes ago I booked the a one way flight from Brisbane to the Solomon Islands. This means, I have time to drive down the 1800km to Brisbane until December 12 and I guess I will leave Cairns tomorrow or on Wednesday.