Our Family Down Under: At Last...We Arrive at The Great Barrier Reef!

We woke up early and boarded the big boat that took us out to Reefworld, where we explored the Great Barrier Reef. It was soooo exciting. We could hardly wait.

When we got to Reefworld, the first thing we did was take a semi-submersible boat ride. It's like riding in a submarine but the top of the boat stays above water. The bottom of the boat is glass and then you get all these windows on the sides for awesome viewing. They took us on a tour with a guide explaining different things we were seeing-- Fish, turtles, corals, sea cucumbers etc. It was really neat to see from the sub boat and great to have a guide explaining everything.

The water was so clear and although the pictures do not do it justice., the reef was full of color. Reds, purples, yellows, greens and oranges everywhere!

This is Oaks enjoying tea on the boat. All the brownies you can eat. Another perk of going on the off-season. There is no shortage of food at tea times.

The ride over was really beautiful. The boat was quite big. You could go upstairs and see the view from the top outside in the fresh air or stay in the boat on the main floor in seats around tables. Here is a cruise ship passing by. What a place to cruise!

These are some of the islands we passed on the way through the Whit Sundays to get out to our spot on the reef.

And here is the the boat house on Hamilton as we were leaving.

Once we got off the semi-sub, we got all suited up to begin our snorkeling adventures. We all got to wear stinger suits, just in case we ran into jellies or sting rays. It's the off -season during the winter here, so we were pretty safe.

But the suits....so cute on these little bods.

This girl is tough!

Oaks was right on Birdy's heels! In the stinger suit and ready for her snorkel! How cute is she!

All set to see Nemo!

Birdy didn't want a life jacket but we felt like it would be wise for her to take a noodle. Even though she is a great swimmer, it was a long day of snorkeling. Look at those finned feet. Sooo in love!!

Happy Noodle, Happy girls!

GRRRR!

Here is Birdy and I holding hands and checking out this HUGE Maori Rouse Grouper fish. He was enormous! And he just swam right up to us!!!

Syd gets to pet the Grouper. The crew at Reefworld have named him George. I guess he is kind of a resident there :)

Amazing!

Me and Birdy petting George. This guy feels like a horse when you pet him! It was awesome!

I love this shot with all these fish just circling around us. The reef is so incredible. It really was like swimming through the set of Finding Nemo. Fish everywhere...every color most of them had every color on their bodies. And the coral was so beautiful. Completely amazing.

Mom and Syd swimming with the angel fish!

Good shot of George!

Just being able to pet this guy, was so surreal. It was so much fun!

Parker man having a jump in the water.

This was one of the docks off Reefworld where you could take off and do your snorkeling. The water was really clear on the day we were there.
What luck!

This kid was seriously living his dream at The Great Barrier Reef. It was awesome to watch him take it all in!
We hardly saw him. He was off pretty much on his own, seeing everything as fast as he could and then going back for seconds and thirds. He loved every second of it.

There was a really cool viewing area under Reefworld. Look at all the corral that is growing on the outside of the structure. Soooo cool. From these windows, you could just watch millions of fish swimming right up to you and schools of fish go cruising by all together. It was really fun!

Here is Lex on his first ever scuba-dive! Awesome!

Lex and the girlies checking out the sites at the reef. Just snorkeling away!

Lex couldn't even keep up with these 2. They just wanted to go explore!

Here is Syd on her own snorkeling adventure. Just hanging with the fish!

Yah...there really were THIS MANY FISH! Everywhere was like swimming through their schools.

The photographers would throw out some food and these little dudes would just swarm in!

Oaks got to touch all sorts of slippery fish!

Memories of a lifetime!

Parker is a really good snorkeler. He likes to dive down a bit and he's coordinated enough to hold his breath and then just blow out his snorkel when he get back to the surface. Unlike me, I'd choke to death on salt water doing this.

Snorkeling across the top of the reef

Well he did it. The crew told us 12 years old and older could scuba dive at the reef and sooooo-- he was 12 for the day! No one questioned it, because he can easily pass for 12. He's nearly 11 now. I don't know how he talked me into it, but I ended up going with him. Scuba diving has honestly scared me a little in the past. I've never had it on the bucket list. But I am SOOO glad he and Lex talked me into it. It was so flippin awesome. Being in the ocean that deep and breathing and swimming among the ocean life was amazing. Seriously exhilarating!

Parker absolutely loved scuba diving!

These are some shots he took with the GoPro.

This is me in the moonlight bay at the bottom of the Reefworld pontoon. You might be able to see my eyes bulging...yes, I was terrified. When the instructors were in the bay with us getting us prepped, I finally grabbed him by the arm and said, "Just so you know, I'm kinda freaking out!" He pretty much changed gears at that point and focused all his patience on me. :)

It took me a sec to get oriented and used to actually taking breaths under water. It feels so wrong! But it felt comfortable a lot faster than I was expecting. Go me...I surprised myself!

I had to keep telling myself to breathe. And every time you exhale your mask fills up with bubbles as they blow past your face. It's a weird feeling. I was glad the dive lasted about 30 minutes so I had a chance to kinda get used to that blasting bubbles feeling.

Parker was awesome. He took to it right away and the instructor said he could go on his own if he wanted.
Like an annoying mom I told the instructor to feel free to stay with both of us. I knew the thought of Park floating alone out there in the ocean would only freak me out further.

It was fun having Park close by though. Then we could point things out to each other and talk about it after we resurfaced. Check out these giant clams we saw. They were huge and bright blue, pink and purple. Cool as.

Because it was just an introductory dive we only went about 10-15 meters down. I was fine with that though :) My biggest fear with scuba diving was just the feeling of clausterphobia having all that water above me and being weighed down with so much equipment. But it ended up not feeling clausterphobic at all. The only time it was even a question was when we had to go under the pontoon to get out of the bay. And it was so quick I hardly noticed. Once you dive down and begin exploring, you feel light as a feather and hardly notice the weight.

But getting suited up and walking in the gear toward the bay...that was another story. Heavy As! I could hardly stand up after I got my suit, tanks, mask and fins on. I was sitting on a bench and literally tried to stand and couldn't. I had to get my legs under me and really heave. I was not prepared for that at all. The crew laughed and said they see that all the time. People trying to stand up as normal, and realizing they were carrying heaps of weight and had to actually make an effort to rise. It was funny. But felt kinda scary too. I just kept thinking, "Oh this weighs a ton. And I am totally going to sink to the bottom of the ocean and probably not come back up." Yah, I'll admit that thought did actually cross my mind!

All set! Let's go down!

Snorkeling with my favorite 10-- I mean, 12 year old ;) NO REGRETS!

Here we are checking our guages, making sure all the oxygen is coming in properly. I had to check with our instructor just to be sure he understood that I might actually be breathing in a lot more oxygen than the average...brave...human doing an introductory dive. Seeing as how my nervous breathing was going about 100 miles an hour-- I could just picture myself sucking my oxygen tank dry in the first 10 minutes and then having...well "nothing left in the tank" as they say! ;) He laughed and said actually you have enough oxygen for about 2 hours so our 30 minute dive will be fine and he even told me he'd seen a LOT more panicky people than me. That was reassuring! Not the biggest wuss on the Reef....pheew!