Christmas on the Reef

12/25/12

Merry Christmas Everyone!

We decided to spend Christmas (and our last day in Cairns) on the Great Barrier reef snorkeling and scuba diving. The boat took about an hour and a half to get out to the reef and we had breakfast during the ride. I took a Dramamine an hour before or so and ate some ginger candies and my motion sickness wasn't bothering me too much. Once we got there Craig and Shea geared up for scuba diving while Clay and I got our snorkel stuff together. We were in the water for about an hour and saw some pretty cool creatures. Our favorite were probably the giant clams. They were huge! Craig would dive down to touch them and they would close their clam shell a little bit. We also saw angle fish, nemos, a few jelly fish, and lots of other fish I don't know the name of. Then we cruised on over to a second dive location where we all just snorkeled. Here we saw a white tipped reef shark! Since it was Christmas we had a feast for lunch and then some wine and cheese for the ride back. It was a tropical Christmas like I had never experienced before.

We had made reservations online for a restaurant to have Christmas dinner at but they were closed so we walked around forever trying to find a place that was open to have dinner at. We were all so exhausted from the day that we basically ate in silence thinking about laying in bed and going to sleep. On the walk back to our apartment I broke my sandals. :(

-Shan