Thursday, 8th March 2018
It was a restless night for me! I was imagining that the police would come along and shine their torch into the camper to see if there were people sleeping – I am sure sleeping in a camper on a parking area in front of the harbour is not allowed…….. Anyway by 6 am we were up and had a shower at the public amenities by the lagoon. Then we went to check in at the harbour terminal – the weather was somewhat stable although there were some threatening clouds rolling in.
After check in, we had some coffee and banana bread as our breakfast and walked towards our catamaran – The Magic Reef – for embarkment. We were one of the first passengers to board and then just took in the whole scene – quite a bit of activity going on in the harbour. Our boat can take 250 passengers but today we were 200 – I was quite astonished at the amount of people boarding!
We went up on the top deck to enjoy our trip but those threatening clouds seemed to be getting closer and we could see already the rain falling in the direction we were going! We had enrolled for various activities – as Gerry is a certified diver, he joined a group of 4 divers with an instructor to do a number of dives. I was going to try the helmet dive ( wearing a helmet from which I could breathe and then get lowered in a cage to see the reef and fish). However by the time we went down for our instructions, it had started to rain so we moved everything down to the lower deck. The boat was rolling on the waves and quite a few people on board were feeling sea sick – the staff were kept busy getting rid of the sickness bags……….
Finally we made it to the pontoon moored on the outer barrier – and it was quite a madhouse – people getting their wet suits on, eager to get into the choppy waters. Gerry had his first dive immediately we moored onto the pontoon. I had to wait for my helmet dive which was planned for 12.50. In the meantime, the weather got worse and a real storm was blowing up – the underwater currents were getting stronger and the snorkel supervisors had to constantly get people back into the snorkel area as they drifted outwards.
When Gerry got back from his first dive, we had some lunch – we had very good catering and enough food to go round. However, while we were having lunch, we were advised that the helmet diver was being postponed by half an hour due to the storm (and underwater currents) and Gerry did say that his visibility was also very minimal – all he saw was grey coral and grey fish as there was no sunlight seeping through! The below pictures should have been the real experience that Gerry should have had of his dive!
Then we were told that the helmet dive was cancelled! I had plucked up so much courage to do this and then it was cancelled………. Gerry too had his other dives cancelled!! He was glad he had his session but it was not worth going down again. He did take some pictures of pictures of the reef as it should have been but of course he never saw this – nor did I – it’s such a shame coming so far and then the weather gods not being kind to us to marvel at this creation!
We headed back to the harbour – a trip of one and a half hours and this time hardly anyone was sea sick – but that’s because the boat wasn’t rolling as it was in the morning. By the time we arrived in the harbour, we all were very tired and glad to be on land again. We walked to our camper which was still parked on the parking area and then drove back to the campsite we had stayed at the other night.
We arrived there just after 6 pm and the reception was closed – however, as we knew the campsite, we could easily enter and find a site to stay overnight. Luckily we had enough food in the camper both for our evening meal as well as for breakfast – we decided that this would be our last night sleeping in the camper van. We then made plans for flight back to Holland and 2 night stay at a hotel in Cairns. Tomorrow morning, I will be calling up Apollo to let them know we will be returning the camper a week early. We were just tired of the wet season!!
