Snorkeling and Scuba Diving - Great Barrier Reef

On Thursday we got on a boat in Port Douglas despite light rain and lightening and traveled out an hour to the Agincourt Reefs. The boat ride out there was pretty bumpy and despite Tracey having motion sickness all else was good. The days plan was to visit 3 sites; at the first site Dave and Joel did their intro dive and I took Emery, Jason, and Zachary snorkeling. Once we got in the water it was great; getting in the water took a bit because of the waves and a bit chilly water temperature. It was amazing! We took some pictures with the underwater camera and the go pro but I didn’t use my phone at all so no photos to post on the blog. The boys did great and loved snorkeling. Harper was too nervous about the waves and decided to wait until the next site to try getting in. The fish were amazingly colorful and the corals were so great!

The second site i got to do the intro dive all by myself with my guide Harold so it was really cool. Getting use to breathing in and out all through your mouth took a few minutes and having to equalize my ears every few minutes but once I was down there it was a whole different experience than snorkeling. I can’t really say which one I like better because they are so different. My guide took me to the sea floor and I got to feel the sand on the bottom which is not like sand in Florida, it’s just ground up bits of shells but not sharp. Florida’s sand is so much finer than here. I saw so many parrot fish and large colorful fish and then tiny fish no bigger than the width of my phone charging cable and the length of my fingernail. Emery and Joel spend the whole time at the second site swimming around and Emery was really enjoying the snorkeling.

The third site was the best since the sun was out and the tide was low so we were closer to the reef but not too close that we would bump into it. Emery and Joel saw the Xmas fans and worms and clams. I finally convinced Harper to get in the water with me and the lovely Aussie lifeguard and she snorkeled for 5 minutes and saw some cool fish right around the boat. The she got out and helped the crew throw bits of fish out into the water. I got to watch from down under the fish going to the surface and feeding. Then I went farther out and just hovered over the same bit of coral for an hour. The longer you look the more you see. It was just amazing to see all the little things going on in the reef. I also got to see a barracuda hanging around at the bottom of the ocean floor.

Then we hopped back on the boat and drove another hour to get back to shore. We treated ourselves to some ice cream and then all went to bed early that night!

Here are the pictures from the day after snorkeling where we are just hanging around our rental house and Palm Cove beach before we caught our flight to Sydney.

The view from breakfasts with my hubby <3

The view of the rainforest from outside our rental house

The kids loved playing on the beach and exploring what was in amongst the rocks.
Then we were off to Sydney for our last few days in Australia.