Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is one of the
seven wonders of the natural world and the only living organism visible from outer space. The
images of the reef at Google Image Search excited me tremendously and the thought of going there and experiencing the marine life gave us goosebumps during the trip planning. Here and there, just decided to go there and experience the most divine, natural, unperturbed marine life on earth. But there was more to come other than just Marine Life.
As we grew our search, we came to know that GBR is much more than marine life. It is an excellent destination where one can not only enjoy the marine life, but also experience beaches, beautiful view of cairns via skydiving and excellent road trip to
Port Douglas and
Cape Tribulation. The more and more search grew our confidence that we are really going to a place we ever envisioned we would go in our dreams.
Finally, after spending lot of hours finding about what all things we should do we came with a 7 days itinerary for our trip. The main things that we decided to do were -
- 2 days and 1 night cruise in the reef,
- sky-diving from 14000 feet,
- road trip from Cairns to Port Douglas to Cape Tribulation and
- 3 days - 2 Nights stay at Sheraton Mirage, Port Douglas.
Let me share my experience with the important areas/activities I covered during this trip.
Great Barrier Reef
Well, if you havent done scuba and snorkeling in your life, I learnt during this trip that how refreshing it is to know more about the life that exists in the water. We booked our tickets on
Ocean Quest for 1 night and 2 days trip. In these 2 days one can do upto 5 snorkeling dives and 2 scuba dives. For diving you dont really need to know swimming. There will be a guide who will make sure that you can dive well. I was impressed with the physical strength of these guides. During snorkel, one guide could carry two people along with him easily. All you need to do is to clutch the swimming pad and move your legs. And the guide will pull the pad via rope. Awesome !!!
I would recommend you to take a camera which I didnt do. Although they will take pics of you in your scuba dive on the first day, but you get to see the beautiful corals with unbelievable colors during the snorkeling time and you just want to capture the moments, the unimaginable corals, the violet-blue-orange-brown-green-and god knows what all colored fishes, the giant clamp, turtles, star fish etc. We got many pics clicked and here is one with the wally.
First night at the reef was also very special. I have never seen so
many fishes, sharks together. The guide focused the lights closer to the
boat which attracted all kinds of fishes. The movement was so fast and
since it was dark, it is nearly impossible to get a good picture with a
normal camera. The below picture captures the moment but it is a bit
hazy.
The food was ok and Ocean Quest cook did make something for us who are vegetarians. The rooms are decently sized (only issue could be that the bed is slightly wet once you move into the room). But I believe in the scheme of larger things, these small issues are ok. We got to experience changing weather, sunset, sunrise and what not.
Sky Diving
After our 2 days excursion at the reef, it was time for sky dive. We booked our tickets at
SkyDive Australia. We had our full trust on our guides (what else we could do otherwise). As the plane started to take off, the feeling of doing something like this was apparent on our face and hands (due to goosebumps). As the small aircraft lifted, we got the glimpse of beautiful cairns. The sky was clear so the sight was awesome. As we were climbing high, the temp was dropping. The moment of truth arrived when we reached 14000 ft and the guy slided the gate and asked to sit on the edge of the plane with our legs hanging in the air. The feeling cannot be described here at all. Everything was there - excitement, fear, disbelief of falling through the sky, hearing your heart beat in that tremendously loud aircraft noise, thinking if parachute will open up or not and what not. The guide just asked us to cross our hands, move a bit back and then he pushed me and himself out of the plane. I have absolutely no idea what happened at that point in time. I was falling, just falling and I dont remember anything probably for 5-10 seconds. And then I was like got into the world of consciousness when the guide tapped my shoulder (it was an indication of making an arc shape). And then I realized that I was falling, falling and falling. I was screaming hard but I could not hear my own voice; the air was gushing so fast through my ears that it was nearly impossible to hear anything. And the guide used his hands to do all the maneuvering, move in circles - clockwise, anticlockwise etc. The free fall lasted 60 secs and the parachute opened at around 4000 ft height.
I was spellbound and it is easy to say that this has been my most incredible time of my life. I dont know if I my going to do it the second time, but this is one such event which I will never forget (even if I want to).
Road Trip to Port Douglas and Cape Tribulation
Immediately after sky diving, we rented a car from Hertz and started our journey to Port Douglas. Stopped at 3 beaches during our journey and took fabulous pictures of the scenery around. Port Douglas is a very small town and we relaxed for next two days. We booked our place at
Sheraton Mirage and had a good stay there. The hotel has a big lagoon which was very good to swim and relax. On our last day we went ahead to Daintree Rainforest. We then further drove to Cape Tribulation.
Cape Tribulation is the place where beach and rainforest meet. But after the trip we felt that it was too long a drive to go there. It could be avoided because it is no vastly different from many other beaches we went.
In all it was a very satisfying trip, had never been to such a place and enjoyed to the maximum. Keeping the advice of our friends alive in our heart and mind, we look forward to another exotic and wild destination in December 2012.
The planning has begun.
