One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Today was spent diving on the Great Barrier Reef, which was....in a word.....AWESOME.  It was my first time scuba-diving, and I loved it!  Except it made me feel kind of like the plastic scuba figures people put in fish tanks.  That's what the reef initially felt like for me, was an oversized fish tank that I was swimming in.  I was doing ok sea-sickness-wise until we all had to get our briefing for scuba, meaning that I had to stare at this guy and not at the horizon, which was.....bad.  I held out as long as I could, but had to go outside at the end and try to recover.  Bleh, not fun.  Once I got in the water though, I felt fine.  Cairns is awesome for the fact that it is the middle of the Australian winter and it is 77 degrees outside, with incredibly warm water.  YAY.  

We did all our "learn how to not suck at scuba" exercises when we first got in the water, and then finally set out following our instructor around to look at stuff.  He would occasionally stop us all and tell us to kneel down on the sand to either check our air levels, or to point something out.  At one point he went and kind of shoved some sand over, and a little stingray flew out and swam away!  So cool!  Later this MASSIVE fish came swimming over, that apparently comes over every time this group dives, and was letting everybody touch it and grab its face and steer it around and stuff.  Kind of weird, but cool at the same time??

On my second dive I saw a giant sea turtle that I swam along with, both sort of staring at each other questioningly....Then apparently the Scottish guys I was diving with breathe way too much, so they had to surface early b/c they were out of air, but my guide took my back down solo anyway to check more stuff out.  He took me into this trench and my first thought was "swim OVER the trench, not THROUGH it".  Curse you, Finding Nemo, for permanently altering my perceptions of Australia!!

I did find Nemo!  He was hiding in an anenenememone.  Standard.  So then on the boat ride back, I....passed out.  Look, you can only be in the sun for about 8 hours straight without getting a little sleepy, and when you add in the whole....gently rocking boat....you get bedtime.

Flying to Darwin tomorrow, and apparently have to get to the airport at 11 for my 1 o'clock flight?  I hate JetStar.  Get to Darwin a little after 3, will probably drop my stuff off at the hostel and roam for a while before sleeping again.

Thus far, have been perfectly content traveling alone, and am loving life in general.  I am SO excited to make my way to SE Asia, even though the Bokator master in Cambodia won't email me back.  I'm gonna get his number and call him up.  No joke.....