Australia Day 6: Welcome to Great Barrier Reef country!

We left the outback yesterday to head for a place with a little more water and a little less flies (the flies were TERRIBLE in the outback!!). Cairns is a beautiful city on the north eastern coast- mountains and beaches together in one place are always picturesque! So today were picked up for 3 dives on the outer GBR out of Port Douglas. The coral on the reef was spectacular!!! Pictures do not do it justice because unfortunately they don't come out with the colors you actually see. It is very colorful down there! Marine life is not the greatest- of corse plenty of fish, and a few other things if you are lucky here and there. We did see about a 5 foot nurse shark sleeping and a curious cuddle fish followed us around. We were in full stinger gear since it is stinger season,and we saw plenty of stingers out there! The reefs are about a 1.5 hr drive off of shore on a nice, large boat. It was a great refresher before our big deep certification dives coming up. Kyle went in the water breathing through his emergency regulator (the clearly yellow one) not remembering about having 2 there, lol. So therefor we were vey thankful for these and of course getting to make the GBR off of our bucket lists....