I went back to Cairns for the third time in a year during my last month in Australia, officially making it my most returned to place in the country. The reason for this is that I still had two extremely important bucket list items to check which I couldn't afford the first times I was there. They also happened to be at total opposite ends of the altitude spectrum.
First of all, I needed to get in my skydive. Australia is an awesome place to do your dive, and they offer various locations all the way up the coast. The most popular one, and the one I chose, was at Mission Beach, a two hour bus ride from Cairns. Skydiving here allows you to overlook the ocean and land on the beach, and the views were phenomenal. Highly recommend.
Secondly, I needed to see the Great Barrier Reef, and I wanted to do it right by scuba diving for the first time. I was far less thrilled at this prospect, but my love of new experiences outweighs my terror of the ocean, so it was booked.
Mission Beach Skydive
Surprisingly, I was not overly nervous about the skydive! I had been wanting to do this for a long time, and having to catch the bus at 6:45 AM from my Cairns hostel kept me tired enough to be calm. We arrived at the visitor building where we all watched a safety video and paid for whatever package we were choosing.
Of course, photos alone are cheapest while photo/video combos are more expensive, and there are actually two options as far as cameras go. The cheaper option is to be given a sort of Go-Pro that you'll wear on your wrist so you're filming yourself the entire way, while the pricier option is to pay for another person to skydive along with you and film the whole way. I'm tight with money in a lot of ways, but not when it comes to memories, and since this was my first and possibly last (hopefully not) skydive, I wanted the best I could get to commemorate it. That's why I ended up with a skydiving videographer who provided a sweet video and over 100 photos despite the fact that I could have practically afforded another skydive for the same price, but no regrets.
I was put onto the first bus to head to the takeoff point which meant I'd be on the first plane, so my reaction was part alarm and part relief that I wouldn't have time to sit and think about it. I went outside and met my tandem dive partner, AKA the man who held my life in his hands, David, and he strapped me into all of my gear.
I was then introduced to our camera lady who did a little pre-jump interview with me in which I am horribly awkward so just please skip that part of my video, thanks. I think attempting to keep my shit together made me come across like I'd taken a Xanax. I actually showed the video to some friends in Byron Bay and one of the guys watched the first bit and sarcastically told me, "Wow! You should be on TV!" Too true to hurt.
We hopped on the bus, drove to the takeoff point, and boarded the plane.
I had been pretty confident up until this point, but as I sat next to that window watching the clouds pass as we climbed higher and higher into the sky, I started getting a little nervous.
David was going over everything with me while he hooked me onto him and gave me goggles for the freefall, and then we reached 14,000 feet. They opened the skydive door and I watched as the first pair of tandem divers on the floor of the plane fell out and plummeted towards the earth.
I was up second. I was strapped right onto the front of David, so I really had no control in the situation. It's actually one of the perks of the skydive- you don't have the option of backing out and there's no need to pull together courage to do it on your own because someone else is basically going to toss you out of the plane whether you're ready or not. He navigated us onto the floor, then before I knew it my legs were dangling out into the open sky. He told me to pull my head back towards his shoulder, pointed at the videographer hanging out the other side of the door, counted to three, and that fast we were flying out of the plane.
The one count.
There wasn't even time to think about it. We did a complete upside down flip into the air as we fell and I screamed. It was awesome.
We straightened right out then and enjoyed the biggest 60 second adrenaline rush of my life as we skyrocketed down in the freefall. You're moving so quickly but you're so aware of every second. It was a little hard to breathe initially where the air was thin, but the further we went the warmer it got and breathing quickly became normal again. The wind resistance was crazy though, at one point I tried to bring my hand to my face and it took two tries as it kept flying away from me and I ended up having to move my head to meet it halfway.
The camera lady flew around us videoing the entire thing, so I split my time between gesturing at the camera and looking around at the scenery, all the while with the hugest smile on my face because this was insane.
We fell for about 10,000 feet before David deployed the parachute around the 4,000 mark. At this point the videographer waved and fell away from us and you could see exactly how fast we had been going. We were on our own in the clouds now, and the rest of the journey down was so peaceful. It was like parasailing but much higher and much cooler.
Mission Beach from above was beautiful. The water was perfect blue, the beach stretched all the way down the coast, and there was even an island nearby. David pointed out areas to me as we glided along, directed us straight through a cloud, I was able to take off my goggles, and he spun us around in circles which made me even more giddy from dizziness.
As we got near the beach it seemed to rise up faster and faster, and all of a sudden we were braced for landing and kicking up sand as we slid our way to a stop. The camera woman was waiting for us and did another little post-dive interview where I couldn't stop laughing from the rush. I thanked David for keeping me alive, then I was unclipped and walked back to the lobby to wait for the bus back.
There were a bunch of other backpackers there diving, so we had a long wait for everyone to finish jumping, but we took turns watching each other's DVDs on the big-screen TV during that time. It was about 40 minutes before I got mine back, and I was so happy with how well it turned out. The music choices were random and different people got different songs, so I was very glad to find out that my band combo was Franz Ferdinand, P.O.D., and Red Hot Chili Peppers.
It was about three hours before the bus headed back, but we did get free food, and I was so buzzing from my jump that I didn't mind. It may not be a cheap activity, but it's totally worth it. Unlike any other experience I've had! (Although I will compare it to a bungee at a later date... skydive is better.)
Great Barrier Reef Dive
Three days later, I was doing the opposite kind of dive, the kind where you strap on a bottle of oxygen and surrender yourself into the terrifying depths of the ocean. Most people dream about this kind of thing. I don't. Screw that. I was made for land. I have talked about my dislike of being in the ocean already, but I feel that this deserves a reiteration.
The ocean isn't inherently bad, I just don't trust it. It doesn't care if one of its tides pulls you out to sea far from rescue where you'll feel the air drain from your lungs and drown isolated and alone in an endless pool of nothingness. Not to mention the jellyfish and stonefish and variety of terrifying creatures that dwell in its waters. Nope. I'd rather look at it from the safety of a hammock or a seaside cabin or better yet, be far away in a forest or at a less threatening body of water like a lake. The ocean just isn't my thing.
That being said, it's an interesting world down there, and I'm kind of fascinated at the fact that there is life that we can't even see that survives at depths that I can't even fathom. I like (non-poisonous) fish and coral and all other sorts of marine life (the ones that can't kill me). If I have a life jacket, I usually feel a lot more confident.
Well, you can't scuba dive with a life jacket, so there's problem number 1. Problem number 2 is that drowning is a huge fear of mine, and you are willingly headed under water for extended periods of time. I was far more nervous about this than I had been about the skydive. Actually, I'm not sure how much of it was nerves and how much of it was a complete disinterest in doing the thing at all.
Despite that, I walked across Cairns to the reef fleet terminal by the marina at 7:15 AM on the day of my dive. I had rented an underwater digital camera from a shop in town, and I had signed up for a sailboat called Ocean Free (I think I had some kind of discount voucher for the company if I remember correctly).
I checked in and boarded the boat where I met one of the dive guides, Scotty, who went over my forms with me. In particular, he questioned the fact that I ticked having some ear problems on planes.
See, when you dive, you need to be able to equalize, which basically means popping your ears every foot or so as you descend deeper into the water. Since sometimes my ears don't pop after getting off of planes, not to mention that I had a cold at the moment, that was a problem. He had me hold my nose and then try to blow air out to see if my ears would pop. My right one did but not my left, and that was a problem. He told me I wouldn't be able to dive if I didn't manage to do it.
Luckily since I did have a cold, I had brought my nose spray with me (so sexy, I know), so I went and used that in the bathroom and waited a few minutes until my sinuses were all cleared out. By the time we got to the site, I was able to pop my ears, so I was allowed to dive.
It took about two hours to reach Green Island where we were diving, but I made friends with a French guy and an American, so I chatted with them on the way. By the time we reached the site, I was still not the least bit excited at the prospect of diving, and of course I was in the first group to go down along with an Irish couple. I was just doing an intro dive, which means we had a dive guide who went with us, we all stayed together, and we learned some hand gestures before diving to let the guide know if we needed to come up or anything. She also went over gestures she would use to show us if she spotted specific types of marine life like turtles or clown fish.
I got my tank strapped on as well as my flippers and mask, and I felt like a clunky immobile mess trying to work my way off the boat. Once I managed to jump into the water, we all held a metal bar on the side of the boat and just put our faces in to get used to breathing the bottled oxygen.
I only panicked a few times during the dive when I thought too much about being far underwater and not being able to breathe through my nose, but I tried to distract myself by paying attention to the ocean sights.
We began by dropping one meter underwater and grabbing a lower bar on the side of the boat. I had no issues with my ears thankfully, so the guide felt comfortable with taking me on the dive. She held onto our arms as we dropped lower and lower, equalizing on the way, and I think we ended up something like 16-17 feet below the surface.
We did see lots of fish. The biggest were near the surface, like the barramundi and some big black fish. We saw tons of coral that was very pretty and brightly colored fish swimming around it.
Apparently we passed by reef sharks and a turtle as well, but I'm obliviously blind and didn't even see them. I did notice the guide doing the turtle signal, but no matter how hard I searched I couldn't see it. Oh well! Tunnel vision is the story of my life.
But here's a pretty fish.
We sat down on the ocean floor and were able to touch this soft orange plant at the bottom. After photos, we made our way back up, and none of it was as bad as I expected.
After dropping off our gear back on the boat, we were allowed to grab a life jacket and snorkel and go back out to explore, so I got to see some more fish. I even finally saw the reef sharks swimming around the boat.
One of the guides took us in turns on a raft to Green Island. The water was so blue and the whole perimeter was beach. There were trees covering the center of the island and a wooden path through, so my French exploration buddy and I walked to the opposite side which was even prettier with dark rocks near the shore and less people.
There was a large tourist food area on the island, but the prices were exorbitant, so I just ordered a mango juice and then walked back to the drop-off point to lay on the beach until the raft came back.
The ride back had lunch, $4 beers, and free goon for everyone (which unfortunately my American friend and I got ourselves cut off from after racing to finish our second glass and immediately requesting another... it wasn't that kind of tour).
I won't be rushing to dive again, but if the area was worthwhile then I wouldn't say no. Also, although our tour was nice, I would recommend diving the Great Barrier Reef somewhere else. Up in Cape Tribulation, they told us the diving was much better as there were less tourists who go out in that area of ocean. I think I expected more. Future snorkeling I would do in Fiji was better, and I think there may be spots on the Great Barrier Reef with more coral and fish. Cairns is a popular place to go, and the more popular a dive site is the more the sea life might clear out.
As far as diving goes, I'll take the sky over the sea, but everyone should try both! Anyway, now that my two big experience items were ticked off my list, I only had a few more stops down the east coast before my time in Oz came to an end.