Best way to beat the rain? Jump in the water and stay there for a while. Lucky for me the best scuba diving on the planet is a mere 3 hour boat ride away from Cairns. Cairns itself is an interesting place. It’s a small port city now blown up from ecotourism and college-aged backpackers. It’s more racially diverse than any other city I’ve been to yet with a sizable asian and aboriginal community. It’s located right in the notch where the Great Dividing Range meets with the ocean so it’s surrounded by hills covered in misty rainforest, something I’d imagine Equatorial Africa to look like. And it’s teeming with travel agencies, hostels, cheap eats, and those horrible bars geared directly towards backpackers.
It was raining when I got here and didn’t really stop for the entire afternoon and evening. After spending the day wandering around this tourist trap of a town I decided I needed to get out of it. And with two World Heratige sites so close the choosing was pretty easy. I dropped another sizable chunk of money on a two day trip out to the Great Barrier Reef.
What is there to say? Diving the Reef was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. Ever. It is everything everyone says it is, and the beautiful stock postcard pictures and videos of the reef generally downplay how it actually looks I can hear my students asking me now: “like Finding Nemo?” (which I still haven’t seen). But yes. Like Finding Nemo. The colors are brilliant and the diversity of animal life is astounding. And it’s all right there in front of you-nothing is hiding or sleeping or tucked into some inaccessible corner like on land. You are down there swimming right next to corals and anemone, right through schools of fish, right past turtles and jellyfish.
The weather was still a mess when I got out there and the boat ride was pretty messy with half of a French school group tossing their escargot into little paper bags, but once we transferred off the daytrip boat and onto the boat stationed out on the reef things improved greatly. For one we were pampered and catered to like I haven’t been in a very long time. I guess when you fork over that much money for a trip you get treated nicely. It was awkward after liffing like a hobo for the past couple weeks but very nice. I was told that since I wasn’t certified to dive in open water I’d go down with Mikey the divemaster for each of my 5 dives. It worked out perfectly. And from the moment I went under the rain and the rocking stopped, things became calm and peaceful, and I found that I could breathe underwater. It’s quite cool-I think all these adventure sports to some degree come about because people try to figure out how they can do things that human’s aren’t designed to do: breathing underwater (scuba diving), walking on water (surfing), sticking to walls (rock climbing), flying (skydiving), and so on. Of all the ones I’ve tried, I think scuba is my favorite.
All those years of teaching skills on the waterfront at camp came back to me. I was spitting in my mask before they could show me how, clearing my mask underwater, clearing my snorkel, equalizing ear pressure, the whole bit. The instructors really liked the bit about calling them fins and not flippers. (anyone? anyone?) I kept swimming with my hand out in front of me and they thought that was pretty funny. But fine. Scuba was easier than I thought it would be, and with all the issues about pressure and temperature and so on a great lesson in physics as well.
Visibility was only 5 meters (only! Have these people seen Boston Harbor??) but I couldn’t complain. I could see plenty, and all in vibrant color. Mikey let go of my arm about 5 minutes into it and I got to dip around some of the most fantastic natural scenery in the world. The trip included 5 dives so I spent about 3 hours underwater total. And as exhilirating as the diving was, being under water was equally as cool. Scuba is an activity that demands focus and centering, making sure you’ve got it all together and above all that you are calm. The slower and more evenly you breathe the better the experience is. Likewise, the slower and more methodically you move the better the experience is. It puts a strain on your body but it’s very much a relaxing thing. I came out of the water each time centered and calm. It’s something to note that I’ve forgottenn about: water calms and centers me. I used to spend three hours every summer morning in the water and was probably much happier because of it. This trip after surfing and diving I’ve come away from the water more calm, relaxed, and centered than I have been in quite some time. I missed the Daintree Rainforest and Cape Tribulation because of the extended reef trip, but that’s OK. I’ve seen trees. I will see trees. This was completely unique and special.
The boat experience itself was a good one, and I’m glad I spent so much time out on the waters of the Pacific before I leave the coast for the deserts of the NT this evening. It was extravagant-nicer than any place I’ve stayed so far. We were fed on real dishes and were cooked meals by a sour-faced ex-Navy cook. We had a hot tub in the bow where I soaked and hung out with Amy, Vivian, and Ena, the first Americans I’ve met out here, after each dive. There were comfortable couches, a sun deck, and a top level with a 360 degree view of everything around you. It was cloudy so my hopes of catching the night sky out at sea were stymied. But the best part of the boat experience, to me, was the rocking. It was gentle and lulling, and made me sleepy more than anything else. After a day of diving the Barrier Reef there really was no greater joy than being rocked to bed by the Pacific. I haven’t been rocked to sleep since I was so young that I wouldn’t remember anyway. But out there in the middle of nowhere it was the best night’s sleep I’ve had on this trip so far. That, above all else, made me appreciate the water in a way I haven’t before: the Pacific, the mother of all life, eternally lulling one of its far-distant offspring into a world of dreams not so different than the reef below.
Posted by davidtaus at July 24, 2005 09:08 PM | TrackBack