Australia, Part II

I told Aaron before we got to Australia that if we came back with nothing else, the only tangible thing I wanted to get on this trip was a picture of me holding a koala. After our diving adventure, we went in search of a koala to hold. We found one at the zoo in Cairns. To be more specific, we went to "Night Zoo" where they bring out all the nocturnal animals.

Here's the little fella I got to cuddle:

His name is Kai, and he was super cute and sleepy.

At the zoo, we also saw crocodiles and kangaroos!

After we got back to the city, we turned on the news and heard about the earthquake in Christchurch. We watched the coverage on the devastation, both to the city itself and the people. So many lives lost and missing. We watched with heavy hearts. Then we realized that we had a lot to be thankful for.

When we were planning this trip way back in August, we were polling our friends and family on what we should do - either go to the Great Barrier Reef or visit the south island of New Zealand. We decided to do the GBR, obviously. But, had we decided to do the south island, we most likely would have flown into Christchurch and still been in the city when the quake hit. Scary stuff.

Australia, Part I

Aaron and I just got back from our trip last night, and we are tired! A full day of flying along with a 19-hour time change is a lot to get through.

But, our trip was amazing. I had the absolute best time of my life. I am so glad we did this.

I'm slowly uploading pictures and writing blog posts (as well as getting back into the swing of things at work and home), so this is just the first part of our trip recap.

We were only in Australia for 3 days, but it feels like we packed a lot in. We spent 2 of those 3 days on a boat in the Pacific, floating right on the Great Barrier Reef. We did a 2-day "liveaboard" diving trip, where you actually spend a night on the boat so you can save time by not having to head back to shore. We did 6 dives in total, including one dive AT NIGHT!

It was like an underwater playground. So much to see and explore, I loved it. Each dive was no longer than 45 minutes, and they all ended far too quickly. We saw countless beautiful fish, fantastic coral formations, bright-colored giant clams, plants that danced and moved, bioluminescent algae, etc etc! The best part, by far, were the sea turtles. I've ooh'd and ahh'd about this on facebook already, but I thought I would share the actual story here.

By the last dive of our trip, many of the other folks on our boat had seen various super cool animals: turtles, sharks, sting rays. But Aaron and I had not seen any of these! (not completely true - we had seen 2 turtles on our night dive, but they were sleeping and we couldn't really get close to them) We were definitely on a mission to see something really cool before we headed back to shore. We were at the end of said last dive and I had just signaled to Aaron that I was almost out of air and we should head toward the surface. We slowly made our ascent, just checking out what was going on at the very top of the reef we were on.

We were only at a depth of about 3 meters, just about to surface, when I saw the large sea turtle swimming a circle around the top of the reef. He had just gone behind a rock, and I was trying to point him out to Aaron (the camera man), who was still ascending. Now, trying to get someone's attention when you're diving (and they're not within arm's reach) can be pretty difficult because you're not usually looking at each other and your peripherals are limited by your mask. I basically just flailed my arms, screamed into my regulator, and started knocking on my tank. It worked and I just started pointing at the rock he was behind and frantically gave Aaron the underwater sign for "turtle". Eventually, he came back out from his hiding place, and we actually got to swim with him for a bit & snap a few pictures.

It was amazing. I just felt so lucky to have that experience with nature, however brief.