the melbourne identity: The Great Barrier Reef!

Okay, so I have been waiting for this day my whole life. Going to the Great Barrier Reef has always been on my "life to-do list," and here we are! Even though I lived in Australia for 3 years when I was younger, we never made the trek all the way up north to see it! It's one of the 7 natural wonders of the world, and it's the star setting for Finding Nemo... and it totally lives up to all the hype!! No joke. As we were flying from Brisbane up to Cairns, we flew over the ocean, and every once in a while I would glance out the window- and we could see the Reef from the plane!! So cool! This definitely is my favorite thing we have done so far. :)

Port Douglas is the closest town to the Reef this far north, so we signed up for a day tour on the Calypso boat. They had a bus come and pick us up from our hotel and take us to the boat at the marina. Then we were off! It was an hour ride out to the reef, and there were about 30-40 others on the boat with us. Here's an aerial shot of our boat (that I, obviously, didn't take).

We stopped at 3 different areas of the reef to get out and snorkel or scuba dive. Here's a pic of Jen, me, and Jenna in front of the reef!

How gorgeous is this water?!!

Okay so while we were stopped for lunch on the boat me & Jen decided to go take a picture with the Australian flag waving in the wind at the front of the boat. We had seen several others do it before us, and the flag was waving perfectly to one side- excellent picture conditions. Literally as soon as we climbed up there the wind must have shifted directions, and we could not get it right!

So Jen had to hold it for us. That would just have to suffice.

Here we are snorkeling! There was a photographer that worked for Calypso swimming around taking pictures of everyone- and it was really ridiculous to try to stay still while floating long enough for him to take a picture... So that was funny in itself- but then both of us kept smiling out of habit, which would cause water to come into our masks, forcing us to the surface... and of course we each did it at different times... poor photographer. He must have been waiting to get a shot of us for a good 15 minutes. Haha.

As I mentioned before, on this boat there was an option to snorkel or scuba dive. Unlike most places in the world, you didn't need to have gone through a certification class to scuba dive. You just had to pay a bit extra, sign your life away, and go through a 20 minute training with the instructor. Jen had signed up to dive, but Jenna and I both decided to stick to snorkeling. Once we got onto the boat though, the instructor told us that Jen was the only person on the whole boat that had signed up for scuba diving! So she convinced Jenna to do it with her. (I'll stay close to the surface, thanks. I'll blame it on too many movies.) Anyway, they ended up diving twice, and they loved it! Here's a very flattering picture of them- Jenna on the left and Jen on the right

This really was the coolest thing ever. The Great Barrier Reef is the prettiest place ever! As I was snorkeling, I was just surrounded by fish. All the time. One time I was looking straight down at all the cool coral, and suddenly I looked up and there were hundreds and hundreds of these little bright blue fish all around me! I thought for sure I would be like hurting them or something, but they just swam out of the way, barely even noticing my existence. (This pic was also taken by the photographer, as were the ones below, but it really did look like this!)