After a full day of diving, what else could we possibly want to do but get up at 6am for another dive? Well, I wanted nothing more than to stay in the nice warm dry bed opposed to putting on a wet swim suit and wet wetsuit to jump into the still dark waters of the Pacific. Stephen, for some unknown reason, requested (by his own choosing) to be awoken at this godforsaken hour to partake in such activities. Crazy fool.
While I slept warmly and dreamed of NFL football, Stephen dove to 19m with a Korean buddy and saw lionfish, unicorn fish (yes, that's really what they're called - and they're apparently more ugly than majestic), and it was quite dark. But he logged his 8th dive, and navigated successfully, which was pretty exciting.
I woke up around 7:30 to join him and the rest of our boat for breakfast, where I had fresh fruit and Stephen had an egg bacon and toast sandwich (of his own creation and description). Meanwhile, the boat headed to one more location within Norman Reef - this time to a site known as "Clipper". By 9am we were in the water, down to 18m in 74F water, and drifting through and over the reef. The most interesting part of this dive was the presence of a round batfish (named because its flippers loosely resemble the wings of a bat [insert Batman theme song here]), which circled us while we waited below the boat as part of our safety stop. It clearly had no fear of humans as it was within touching distance the entire time. We also saw multiple pineapple sea cucumbers and angelfish. Stephen was quite comfortable in the water by this time, while I still struggled with getting my bearings underwater in relation to the boat. Fortunately, only one person needs to know where the boat is, and in this case, it wasn't me.
For our final dive (number 9 for me, number 10 for Stephen), we returned to the depths of "Clipper", hanging around 14m trying to conserve oxygen so we could spend as much time underwater as possible. The highlight of the dive was our discovery of a 7ft reef shark lying in wait on the bottom of the ocean. Good news, we were cool as a (sea) cucumber, watched the shark without aggravating it, and successfully communicated its presence to other divers in the vicinity. While I did make Stephen ask directions back to the boat from a different group's guide, our final dive was a definite success, with lots of incredible fish and coral growths. We even saw a cave. We did not go in.
We came back up for lunch, showered our 4 minute showers, and packed up our room. While our final dive may have been a success, for some of our new acquaintances, they were not so lucky. No, they were not mauled by sharks or impaled by sting rays. However, we'll give you one guess as to what happened based on this picture:
Turns out Ryan's waterproof iPhone case - not so waterproof. Possible remedies that were suggested included putting the phone in a pitcher of fresh water, soaking it in rubbing alcohol, keeping it in a bag of rice, or waiting and taking it to a local phone repair place in Cairns (which we have decided is pronounced like the first half of "Kansas" --> "Kans"). He settled on rice and a repair shop. We don't know what fate unfolded.
By 2pm, we were back on the SeaQuest headed back to Cairns. This time, rather than sitting in a hot stuffy room, we sat on the top deck and got soaked, but no one threw up. Good compromise. After disembarking, we forced our instructor Pam to take a picture with us to capture the excitement of the week. Here we are:
What a good-looking bunch of SCUBA divers.
We were then returned to our hotel, the hotel Balinese, and believe it or not, it was only 5pm by this point. Long day, with more adventures still to come. At 6pm, we were picked up and on our way to the Cairns Zoo for a nighttime tour.
We had the most...interesting...bus driver, who, after passing this billboard:
felt the need to tell us every horror story about people being eaten, kidnapped, drowned, and mauled by crocodiles. It was a 40 minute bus ride. That was interesting. She also managed to work in some shark attacks to SCUBA divers. Awesome.
We then arrived at the night zoo for a night of traditional Aussie barbecue, koala hugging, kangaroo feeding, star gazing, and torch-carrying tours. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite as advertised. The barbecue was okay - I had lettuce. The best part - free booze. We got to try some local beers and sat with a young married couple from Sydney; the wife was a stay-at-home mom while the husband was an ultramarathoner/former SCUBA instructor. We had lots to talk about.
We then got our torches (again, this means flashlight, not badass stick with flames as seen in National Treasure). We got to see the koalas, which were not nearly as cool as when we were at Featherdale Wildlife Park (see the Blue Mountain Adventure post). The reptile house had some huge snakes and amphibians, in the tiniest tanks and cages - it was almost sad. While most people were looking at the big lizards and toads, Stephen and I wandered outside and were blown away by the stars - both the number and the clarity.
After the stars we were part of an animal "showcase", that put the already tired Stephen to sleep. They had a small rodent related to mice, a snake, a koala, and an owl. Kind of cool, but not the most engaging of activities. Stephen was feeling the effects of the 6am SCUBA dive while I was feeling the effects of Stephen getting up for the 6am dive and asking me if I was sure I didn't want to come too. Fortunately, we were re-invigorated when we followed the group to the crocodile pens and got to see giant crocs being fed from sticks. Here is one of those crocodiles:
Crocodile feeding was followed by us getting to feed kangaroos - one of our favorite activities - but this time, no handy waffle cones, and bigger kangaroos:
Just for reference - kangaroos - very soft; wallabies - pretty soft; koalas - not so soft; wombats - not so soft and they bite - which is why you don't want to pet wombats unsupervised.
Tomorrow we head to a rainforest park - our first day on land after three days at sea. We'll see how this goes!
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