Day 13: Diving on the Great Barrier Reef

Published: 14.07.2024

We're used to getting up early by now. The Silverswift transfer bus picked us up at the Sheridian Hotel right on time at 7:20 a.m. (Australians seem to be even more punctual than Germans). We were taken to the large Ocean Adventure Center at Cairns harbor. There we had to queue up. Tours to the Great Barrier Reef are (unfortunately) mass processing here. But we had already noticed that when we booked: many of the tours have 150 or more participants.

When we were looking for a provider with few guests (around 40), there was actually only one, but they had canceled at short notice 6 weeks ago because the boat had a defect. So we had to switch to another provider. Our tour provider was now Silverswift. There were only supposed to be around 70 people on board.

Luckily there were only about 20 divers. The organization was pretty good. We first received a short diving and safety briefing. Then the equipment was distributed.

The trip took us to the Outer Reef. After about 45 minutes of driving we arrived at our first diving spot on Flynns Reef - Coral Garden.
Our first dive took us around 40 minutes through various coral formations. There were lots of colorful fish swimming around. We even saw a small reef shark.

It was only a 5 minute drive to the second dive at the Boulders dive site. There, too, we were underwater for 40 minutes. The giant clams were impressive. There was also a reef shark here.

After the lunch break on board - there was a pretty good selection, everything was well organized here too - we drove to the third dive spot - Tracys.

Here we saw even more colorful fish, including some large ones. And we also saw Nemo and his friends again - clown fish between the anemones.

Overall it was a great experience!

We arrived back at the pier around 4:30 p.m. and were taken by shuttle bus directly to the campsite.
First we had an ice cream there.

Since we have to return the motorhome tomorrow, it was time to pack our suitcases. Given how spacious the motorhome is and the fact that we need some of the things by tomorrow afternoon, this was a bit of a challenge.

For dinner we had pizza from a delivery service. It worked out great - right to the gate of the campsite.