Great Barrier Reef

Well today was our Great Barrier Reef tour!  It turned out a day later than expected.  The trip got cancelled yesterday because of bad weather so we went today which actually worked out perfectly because it's Daniel's birthday!  There were still some pretty big waves heading out to the island and I made an excellent decision to take some gravol before we left in the morning.  It was about 1 and a half hours boat ride out to the island and surrouding lagoon and reef and soooo nauseating!  There were tonnes of people vomiting on the boat (Jess Brennan...I thought of you!) and this must happen a lot because they were well stocked with barf bags!  So it was nice to finally get there.  They first took us onto the island which is only 700m across for a short tour.  The island is 6000 years old and is formed entirely by all the dead coral from the reef which is pretty amazing.  There are these birds that come every year to nest on the island so there were tonnes flying about when we were on our walk.

We spent the next several hours snorkelling, which was, of course, amazing :>)  The fish were so beautiful, colourful and plentiful!  Even the coral was pink and purple in some areas.  And the highlight....turtles!  There are green turtles that hang out on coral reefs near the island that our guide called "turtle cleaning stations" and the little fish clean the algae off them.  At one time we saw 3-6 at once and sometimes they swam right by us when we were snorkelling.  It was soooo amazing, like being in another world!  It's so wonderful and peaceful under the water too, I just loved it.  In the afternoon the sun really came out and it was lovely the way it was shinning through the water and lighting up the fish.  The lagoon was this picture-perfect turquoise colour, so it was pretty much like swimming in paradise.  I can also proudly say I was the last to come out of the water and they had to blow the whistle at me :>)  And fortunately the trip back was way less bumpy than the trip out to the lagoon.

We are still in that fantastic hostel in Agnes Waters and it has a great kitchen for cooking that we've been taking advantage of so Dan bbq'ed himself a steak and I made some salad and potatoes for supper.  At dusk there are tonnes of little toads who come out here and hop around as we eat dinner...so cute.  The hostel's dog also kept us company..although I think it may have had something to do with Dan's steak.

Tomorrow morning we are returning our rental car in Noosa and will take the bus the following day to Byron Bay for a few days.

One other point of interest that I forgot to mention from before...when it rains in this country, it really rains!  Apparantly they have had drought here for like 10 years and 2 years ago hundreds of people were killed from bushfires, and this is the first season in a long time that they have at too much rain!  We've asked around, and apparantly most of the flooding that happened in Queensland in Dec/Jan has subsided and cleanups are underway, but there have been huge damages to the sugarcane and bananas, so they are expecting prices to go up.  The major recovery/rebuiling that is happening now is is Cairns, where the cyclone hit.  We did, however, experience some pretty crazy rain and flash flooding when we were in Melbourne.  One night all of a sudden you could see the clouds moving in and then literally 5 minutes later is started raining sooo hard and we stopped for shelter and stood on this step about a foot high beside a restaurant and within 10 minutes the water that had accumulated from the rain was already at our feet!  Then these crazy bugs who were also trying to get away from the water started crawling up my legs and I kind of freaked out!  So we decided just to make our way back to our hostel and we were literally knee deep in water!  It was crazy!  Your could see the water going under the door of the restaurants downtown!  The next day I asked at the hostel if this was "normal" and the lady said it usually happens once or twice a year...crazy!

We'll talk to you all later!

Love Hanna and Dan

Lady Musgrave Island and our snorkelling spot...paradise?  We thought so!