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Townsville, Australia
19° 15' S 146° 48' E
Feb 23, 2006 06:06
Distance 1687km

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THE GREAT BARRIER REEF

Text written in: English

So it turns out the great barrier reef is great, but not that great. I certainly enjoyed my experience diving there, but would not repeat it due to the cost and due to the price one must pay in order to enjoy the reef. But David, you said price AND cost, aren't they the same thing? Not in this case my friend.

The cost of diving the reef is expensive, but not too bad considering what it is. Its just that 200 dollars for 2 dives is very expensve on a backpacker's salary (which happens to be nothing, believe it or not I dont get paid for what I am doing). On the other hand the price one must pay is tough no matter who you are. The city of townsville is a pretty boring place, what I would call a "one horse town, " so you are really excited to get out to sea on your dive boat and see the famous reef, but about 30 minutes into the 2.5 hour trip out to the reef you begin to realize that the trip is not entirely pleasant. As it turns out, the water between the mainland and the reef is pretty rough and the boat begins to rock pretty good. After just a bit, one woman had her head in one of the 15 buckets they keep handy on board, but of course one sick person on a dive boat is to be expected. unfortunately, the ride started to get rougher and the casualties grew. Luckily bot Noah and I (2 out of only 3 genuine certified divers) kept the contents of our stomachs inside our bodies until....

About twenty minutes before we reached our destination, we (the 3 divers) went down to the maindeck of the boat (kind of hot and stuffy) which had about 5 people staring at the bottom of plastic buckets (out of 15)  for a  breifing on the dive site, the briefing went well, as I felt extremely macho for keeping my food in my belly, when all of a sudden I looked to my left to see Noah also face deep in blue bucket. The dive master, the other diver, and myself had to spend about a second to collect ourselves before we could continue as this boat was getting to be a ridiculous scene, practically half of the people were getting sick, and the deck hands were running back and forth just to keep up with the bucket emptying/cleaning demand. But, we had to continue as if everything was normal, even though I began to feel quesy with the site and the smell of so much sickness, luckily i held it together and made it into the water vomit free.

 

The actual reef was great. As a fairly experienced diver paired up with a marine biology student from santa cruz, we were free to explore the watery depths on our own. Unfortunatelyat the end of the day  I lost to Noah (who dove with the dive master) in the seeing sharks department and had to settle for beating noah in the unofficial seeing sting rays contest. After two pleasant dives, we headed home and prepared ourselves for the excitement of fraser island.