3rd October - Da reef

Congratulations Sarah Cornelius for having a full blown PADI, a certified diver's licence that is. Woooohooooo.

We celebrated with the other qualificatees at the world renowned Woolshed hotel, a dive of a place full of 18 year old fun bus travellers. There were loads of drunk people where the theme of the evening was to sign one anothers T-shirts, there was no way they were doing that on my new shirt. It was a lot of fun but we really shouldn't have gone home at 1 ish, we had another boat trip the next day.

6:30 am rise for the snorkelling trip to the reef, sore heads and dodgy stomachs were not the cure we were looking for. Anyway, we made it and the sea knew we were coming because it was choppy, again. But we eventually made it to the reef and dove right in and snorkelled around. The reef was beautiful as ever and Sarah got to see a reef shark, I totally missed it so felt a bit gutted afterwards. The water was so warm too about 22 degrees, not like Bognor.

After we'd been to the first reef they offered up a package to fly back to the mainland in a helicopter. Seeing as Sarah had cheekily gone up in one the day before with her dive course, she talked me into it, plus the thought of an hour and a half on choppy seas swayed me too. So I barged my way to the front and got a good deal, 1 ticket to the mainland in a helicopter going via 5 different reefs. Quality.

Afterwards I met Sarah at the Blue Lagoon and we got take away before going to bed about 8, knackered. Tomorrow sees us leave Cairns at last. We've been here too long. Now we get a campervan for a month, it's a Wicked camper - http://www.wickedcamper.com.au/ . It could be interesting to say the least...

Laters

Pricey

P.S. I can't remember if I have told this story but I will again. When going to the dive shop to find a good package, Sarah enquired about her contact lenses, when asked 'How blind are you?' by a thick accented Aussie, Sarah replied 'Blonde? What does that have to do with it?'. So the answer was very blonde, very blind and a touch deaf.