Back in Cairns... again

Ok... now we're back in Caaaaaaairns and Betty is all fixed up with a new battery and charger. I'm glad that we were right and that there was something wrong with her. The hire company were massively reluctant to believe us on the phone and so we had to drive back here to show them that things were not as they should be. After about an hours work she was ready for us.

It has occured to me that I haven't written anything about the week on the liveaboard. I'd love to put some pics up on here but James is currently busy sorting his pics out and they're all on his camera.

We rocked up to the boat at about 6pm on a Thursday evening to be greeted by a champagne reception. We met all the other guests and the crew. We were the youngest on board for the first part of the week but it was no problem. After a very bumpy night we made our way to the first dive site and were in the water at very early o' clock. The boat operated an open deck policy, which meant that you could pretty much dive when you wanted, up to 5 dives a day. I had to have an orientation dive just to prove that I'm not completely useless in the water as it had been over a year since I'd dived. After that dive we were able to buddy up and do as we liked at each dive site. This was far preferable to following a dive leader and being in a big group crowded around a reef and scaring everything away.

I won't bore you with the details of every dive (I'm sure James has that stored up for the future) but some highlights for me were seeing my first sharks (whitetip reef sharks and a grey reef shark), lots of cuttlefish, the Potato Cod at Cod Hole (particularly during the night dive when they followed the light of my torch to hunt with) and many other things. While on board I did the Nitrox speciality course which allowed me to use a different blend of gas with a much higher oxygen content. This made multiple dives far less tiring than if I'd been using air. We both did the Naturalist speciality course with the illustrious Laurence Buckingham, a man not quite of this planet. We weren't going to bother with it but after chatting to him we felt we had to. The man is a real gold mine of information, and we both learned a lot from him.

The week was split into two parts, with some members of the group leaving halfway through to be replaced by newcomers. We met some fantastic people on the boat, both crew and guests. Anyway, I'll leave this topic for James to talk about as it really is his forte and it seems like I haven't shut up yet =)

We should be heading out to the Atherton tablelands and that area tomorrow. Hopefully we'll be meeting up with a girl that James met on one of his Operation Wallacea expeditions later today so that'll be cool. We have to be in Airlie beach by Nov 3rd so that James can prepare for his diving instructors course. We'll be there for about a month in total, and I'm thinking of ways to pass the time as he'll be pretty busy all that time.

Stay in touch!

Katy x