Setting the scene..the temperature was humid, muggy and the mosquitoes… BIG. The flight to Cairns where I would begin my diving adventure was delayed as flights always are. I arrived well after midnight and the next day I woke up late for the boat pickup. Liveaboard diving boat for 2 days and the best part were the full-body lycra stinger suits! No, not really. I kept my boardshorts on and took my stings to the legs with a lot of cursing. Lady-like cursing of course.

Stinger suits are lycra skintight costumes to keep jellyfish out and make you look really cool, like a big smurf. So every dive there would be 30 or so smurfs all trudging to the water and jumping in. The diving was good, warm water and 30m visibility. It was overall quite shallow, maybe 40m depth. Night dive was uneventful but it had some amazing phosphorent plankton, like the scene in “The Beach” where you wave your hands around and the water explodes in sparkles of light..

No sharks except for 1 juvenile grey reef shark. No turtles either. Or manta rays. But lots of colorful fishes and corals and lots of warm water. The dawn dive was good, except for the 530am wake up call. I didn’t wake up until I hit the water and then it was worth it. 1 day left to go and I went on a day trip to Lower Isles departing from Port Douglas. I was really “turtled” to death there, we spotted 2 turtles from the boat, then I swam with 3 turtles (yay!) and spotted another 2 turtles from the glass bottom boat.

It was a good trip. I need to do more of it. Love the ocean!

I hope you’re all well and keeping warm or cool where you are! Happy holidays!

x
Shi