Great Barrier Reef Cruise Stops: #2 & 3

Lance Here:

The next two stops on the trip were Cairns (Yorkey's Knob) and Port Douglas.  Unfortunately, with the timing of the boat we were unable to do any of the excursions that we really wanted to do in Cairns, so we used that day as just a little hang out on the beach and waterpark.  Continuing the port city theme, there was a community pool on the beach along with a waterpark for the kids.  Guess which member of the family had the most fun?

    

Our last port of call was Port Douglas.  The marina was in the estuary, and there were all manner of boats moored in amongst the mangrove trees and their impressive root systems.  Add in the heat and humidity and Port Douglas had a little bit of a bayou feel, but with thick Aussie accents instead of Louisianian.

The rock was nice and cool.

Port Douglas was the stop on the cruise closest to the Great Barrier Reef, so we planned a snorkeling trip on the reef.  We decided to go to the inner reef as we had James (the outer reef was only reachable via speed boat given our time constraints and James wasn't allowed on those).  We took the Wavedancer, a very fancy catamaran, out to the Low Isles and had a great day snorkeling amongst the reef.  The benefit of taking this particular company was they landed on the beach and you snorkeled from there, versus snorkeling directly from the boat.  This way James could play at the beach and in the shallows while the other parent snorkeled.  James and I took a glass bottom boat tour around the island and saw all the cool fish swimming around while Maggie got in some quality snorkeling.  It was the tail end of Jellyfish season up there so we had to wear lycra (stinger) suits.  We looked goooood.  The water was almost too warm up there; I really never would have imagined the ocean to get as warm as it did around the low Isles.

Sleeping on the boat on the way to the reef.

James and I then suited up and I headed out for a good snorkel while James stayed and played on the beach with Maggie for a bit in his lycra suit.  He’s obviously the cutest person ever to wear one.  It was much too big for him so we had to tie knots in the legs and arms.

We put together a video of the snorkeling.  It's pretty long, but you can skim through it to see what kind of coral and fish we saw.  The coral was different than what we were expecting after seeing colorful pictures of the Great Barrier Reef, but they were still attractive in their own way.  We were swimming through soft coral instead of hard coral (the pictures you're probably more familiar with) because we were so close to the estuary.  The further to shore you get the more soft coral you will see.  They have to be soft to shake off the sediment coming from the river.  Hard coral that can't rid themselves of sediment die from lack of sunlight.

After we switched on and off a bit for snorkeling around the island, we headed back to the Port to get back to the cruise ship.  It was an absolutely stunning view of the sun sinking over the water.  The whole cruise we had absolutely incredible weather and the views of sunrise (yes I caught pretty much every one because James was up so early) and sunset were spectacular.