After our sojourn on Whitehaven Beach we spent the remainder
of the afternoon snorkelling. Dave found us a nice sheltered spot and we got
back in our stinger suits and grabbed a mask and snorkel. Unfortunately, we did
not have an underwater camera so my words will have to be the pictures instead.
After jumping into the sea, which was approximately between 8 metres to 3
metres deep, we quickly scanned for jellyfish (we did spot loads but thankfully
they were harmless…although we were only told this after we got out and descried them to Dave) before training our
eyes on the more interesting aquatic life on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR).
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| A sea turtle! |
There were hundreds of fish, so bright and colourful. There
were sergeant major fish in splendid black and white, parrot fish with bright
red, yellow and blue markings that made them look like they had a beak as well
as numerous blue and yellows, rainbow fish and all sorts of others that were
not scared of us and swam all around us. There was a few big guys, called Gumbi
fish or something like that, they were perhaps a metre long and pretty fat,
with big bulbous eyes and a grey-green colour. Nicola and I spent about an hour
snorkelling along the GBR, swimming amongst the fish and keeping our eyes peeled
for the crowd favourites – sea turtles. Unfortunately we did not spot any sea
turtles…
The GBR itself is quite a thing to behold, the coral is so
diverse in colour, shape and size that it was hard to appreciate all the fish as well as the GBR. Some of the coral
was shaped like a 20 foot yellow cauliflower whereas other sections were long
and spaghetti like. We swam amongst all the coral we could see, always keeping
an eye out for jellyfish, and were amazed by the diversity of the GBR. Out of
interest, the GBR starts near Bundaberg and heads on all the way past Cairns,
which to put in context, it took us 11 hours on a bus to get to Airlie Beach,
and Cairns is another 10 hours from Airlie each; that may help put the size of
the GBR in context.
After getting out of the sea, it was nice to say that we had
snorkelled the GBR. We have been advised that snorkelling the GBR is better, if
you are a beginner diver anyway, because when you go diving your introductory
dive is down to 5 metres. Pretty much everyone can dive with a snorkel to that
depth, plus you see the same things snorkelling as you do diving at that depth
plus, the fish get scared by the diving apparatus whereas they don’t when you
go snorkelling. We were told by a underwater diving photographer that on his
days off, he actually prefers to snorkel the GBR than dive, so consider your
options before paying $100 to $500 for diving trips, just buy a snorkel and
mask.
We spent the rest of the evening relaxing and had a relatively
early night, after a few more glasses of goon. We woke early the next day and
spotted a sea turtle swimming alongside the boat and as we were getting excited
Dave informed us that we would be going snorkelling in turtle city – which we assumed meant a place with loads of turtles.
After getting on our stinger suits Nicola and I grabbed the sea scooter (a
James Bond style swimming gadget that was really good fun) and jumped into the
sea being powered along the surface by our sea scooter. We were really glad we
had taken the sea scooter because we soon came across a sea turtle, we got as
close to it as we thought safe without startling the guy (Dave said they were
sometimes spooked into not breathing and then drowning, which we didn’t want to
happen) and swam alongside him for around 15 minutes before scootering off in
another direction. Before we knew it, we had come across another sea turtle, this time he had a mate with him, there were two sea turtles! It was magic, such a
brilliant sight. They are so graceful as they swim through the sea, chomping on
sea grass. We followed one of the sea turtles for a little while and as we
intended on turning back and going to the boat, we saw another turtle, our
fourth of the day. And before any of you smart arses say we saw the same two
turtles, we could tell by the colour of it’s shell, and the shell markings that
they were different. We followed our fourth turtle back to the boat
(convenient) before pulling ourselves into the little dinghy and heading back
to Blizzard. Swimming with sea
turtles was one of the most magic things Nicola and I had done, up there with
cuddling a koala; it was just amazing.
After snorkelling with sea turtles we had a go at
paddleboarding (where you stand on a surfboard type board and use a paddle to
move around), which was difficult. But primarily difficult because there were
only five, and five people had travelled from the boat to the shore and we then
swapped. By the time we swapped however, the waves and strong current were
pushing us back towards the beach which prevented us from having a real bash at
it. Nevertheless, it was fun, albeit very tiring. We spent our last morning in
the Whitsundays walking along a strip of sand that linked two islands (called
Langford Reef), the cool thing about that strip was that minutes before we
arrived it was completely submerged and after we left the strip would soon
become submerged once more.
After our final relax on the beach, we boarded Blizzard and sailed back into Airlie
Beach, sad that our time sailing the Whitsundays was over.
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| Our sailing route |
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