Day 9

• What I did today & Journal of the Day

No one, and I mean no one, was as excited for this day as we were! We were going to the GREAT BARRIER REEF!!!

After the early hours and a yummy breakfast, we got onto a bus and straight to the Great Barrier Reef port... We got onto a cruise ship and almost immediately took ashore! As the wind was blowing, you could smell the sea salt wooshing up from the sides of the boat... To me, that was the spontaneously beautiful smell of the ocean, and definitely a smell that I will always recognize as this small trip to the Great Barrier Reef!

When we got there, our boat was anchored into the water and attached to this extra port sort-of-thing. I'm not exactly sure what it's called, but it was sort of like a big deck on water... a lot of space, tables, and room for lounging, tanning, and just having "fun in the sun"! The very first thing I did when I got there, was grab my friends and get geared up for our snorkeling adventure underwater. We grabbed fins, a snorkeling mask (the trick when cleaning it is to spit- as disgusting as it sounds- into the lenses and then swish it up with water, it works!), and a snorkel breathing tube... As soon as we walked down the stairs, put our fins on in the water, and our masks were on our faces, we grabbed hands and jumped into the water (carefully, of course)! It was freezing cold at first, but then as you started to move around, it got a little warmer... The water was crystal clear! The very first thing I saw when I looked below me, was open space, lots and lots and lots of it. I kept swimming, while keeping with the buddy system, until we started to get closer to the coral reef. Seriously, the Great Barrier Reef was AMAZING!

At one point in time, I looked up to get a feel of the sun, and when I put my face under the water in the next second, I literally slammed my face into coral! It was pretty funny...! I started laughing so hard, I totally forgot I had a tube in my mouth, and the next thing you know, I began gulping in salt water into my mouth... At the same moment, I started panicking because I didn't know what was happening, and so I started to swivel my body in all directions, exactly what they told us NOT to do. Oopsie. I started to freak out and started swimming backwards too, but apparently I was going in circles because I definitely did not end up where I first whammed myself into coral... All of a sudden, I hit something hard on my thigh in the water, something prickly and rough. Uh-oh. I turn around, trying to look at what I hit, and instead of locating my mishap location, I smack myself into another bunch of coral! By this point, I really did not know WHAT to do and I swam back up, eventually also hitting the coral with my flippers. Great. I finally got back up, taking out my tube from my mouth and gulped in a BIG amount of air. I was fine... Who knew that much could happen in just a couple of seconds?! And I remember it exactly, weird enough. So now, I had a memory AND a scratch on my thigh, a souvenir (yay!)!!! I realized I was feeeeeet away from my buddy, so I quickly caught up... Now, since I knew what to avoid, I started to look around the Great Barrier Reef.

It was just simply fascinating! Everything was in vibrant colors! It was beautiful! The coral were all soft or hard, flimsy or hard, or even flowed with the movement of the water. I even saw this really cool red, orange, and yellow fish! I saw clownfish, Dory-like fish, a small seahorse, clams, a small turtle, and these really BIG fish! I was out on the water for maybe about an hour or so, and after a while I was starting to get cold, and so as I started swimming towards shore (or the side of the boat), I found myself swimming with a school of fish, which I've always wanted to do... I reached out my hand, but they just scattered away. I guess they didn't like company except themselves, or something. Anyways, it was really fun and cool. I even tried following this one fish, but I ended up just going in circles again. I got out of the water, sat on the bench, and took my flippers off, and walked up back to the end, running/hopping to get my towel... I was freezing! The rest of time, I had delicious lunch, talked with my friends, and went to go visit the little aquarium-like thing underneath the boat. My friends and I laid on the deck, having the water evaporate into the air and taking lots of pictures. At one point in time, this lady that was in charge of some sealife thing, brought in sea cucumbers, starfish, clams, and other shells.

They were pretty neat! When I first touched the sea cucumber it was all hard and prickly, which wasn't too bad, but then I touched another sea cucumber, and it was slimy and squishy... the complete opposite! I screamed quietly jumping back! But then I gave up the nerve and picked it up in my hands, and I watched it fold around my hands, starting to suck onto them. It was pretty funny, especially when it started to squirt water out if its little "hole" on top... Then, I picked up the starfish, and it was really cute since it was tiny and small. It was orange and when it was on my hand, its little tentacle-like things started moving and I was like "awwww, it's so cuuute!" And then I dropped back into the water... And when almost everyone disappeared from the deck, I don't know where they went, the lady came up to me and my friends and asked us if we would want to put the creatures back into the reef, and we said yes with big smiles on our faces! We had a lot of fun together, watching the school of fish swim back and forth under the water. And at one point, we realized that the tide lowered and you could even see the coral "hanging" outside of the water... I have to say, the Great Barrier Reef is BEAUTIFUL and completely breathtaking! It's so cool to know that life is all around you, no matter how small or big it may be... It all seems so unreal.

After our snorkeling experience, we started heading back to the harbor. We had a lot of funny stories and inside jokes to laugh about on the way back, it was hard to keep it all in!!! Once we got to shore, I couldn't help but take the smell of the water with me back to the hotel. I even smelled like it too!
Like the previous day, we hung out with friends for a couple of hours... We got dinner and walked around the city. We even dared ourselves to try kangaroo, crocodile, and emu! I never thought that I would even TRY it, but I did, and I'm glad I chose to do so. After all, it was our second to last day in Australia... Why not? Surprisingly, it was delicious! And Katie, Shelby, Steven, and I couldn't help ourselves but get some more meals! It was yummmmmy!

So, the day neared its end, but what a wonderful day it was! Full of adventure and laughs... I wish everyday could be like this!

"I got croc in my mouth!"