Great Barrier Reef

Friday, July 13, 2012

First views of a whale

What a great day!  We were up and out of the hotel by 5:15 am.  We had a two hour drive to Airlie Beach to get on our cruise to the Great Barrier Reef.  We went on Cruise WhitSunday.  It was a little wet and rainy on the way out.  It took about 3 hours to get out to the reef.  About halfway, we saw our first humpback whales.  We saw their blowholes and tails.  Sydney, Dagan, and I saw one whale breach 2 times.  Way Cool!  I wish I had my camera ready when they did that. 

Pontoon on the reef

Sydney getting ready to snorkel.

Dagan getting ready to snorkel.

Finally, we got to the pontoon out on Knucklehead Reef.  We got our wetsuits, fins, masks, mouthpieces and jumped in the water.  Once in, a large Napoleon Wrasse fish touched Sydney and scared her.  Then it touched both Adam and Dagan and scared them, too.  Dagan tried to climb on top of Adam's head.  It was funny.  We snorkeled around for while before breaking for lunch.  After lunch we went on the submersible.  We learned that the reef has over 150 types of coral and 200 types of fish.  It was interesting to learn about what we were seeing.  After our ride, we went snorkeling again.  Sydney wanted to pet the wrasse, so we swam around looking for it.  We tried to get close, but it was lower than we could reach.  Dagan had fun trying out the waterslide on the pontoon.  The kids decided to practice diving under the water.  They couldn't use the snorkels, but had fun going down deeper.  They can't wait to go snorkeling again.

Adam and the kids

Kristin snorkeling

Whale by the side of the boat

Whale coming out from under the boat.

On the way home, we saw whales again.  They swam right next to (and under) the boat.  It was really awesome.  The captain stopped the boat for quite some time.  They are really amazing to see that close.  We will not need to go on a whale watching cruise any time soon.