The Great Barrier Reef!

We woke up early to head out about 2 hrs into the ocean to see the reef! As I’ve said, it’s just barely spring here, so the weather is a bit unpredictable - and, it was somewhat windy and stormy today. They told us as we were boarding that the weather was going to make it a “rough trip” and they weren’t exaggerating!

Luckily, I appear to be completely immune to sea sickness. I’ve never struggled with it at all - But Jordan has it in spades, and it’s getting worse the older she gets. She usually is able to control it with motion sickness medicine, but not today. She wasn’t alone tho. The boat carried over 60 divers, snorkelers and crew and I swear at one point over 3/4 of those people were vomiting all at once. The sound was indescribable. Luckily they had tons of vomit bags, but it was still pretty nasty. Just watching THAT almost made me sick.

The waves were HUGE that the boat was cutting thru. The “worst” sea conditions I personally have ever seen. But we eventually made it to the reef and we were able to anchor in the reefs protection. We went on two dives and it was pretty special just knowing where we were.

The reef is made up of 3000 smaller reefs. We visited just 3 of them today. It’s the largest “living” structure on earth - it can even been seen from space! The government restricts access to almost all tourism, only permitting boats out to a handful of them. Which is good. They need to be protected. Even with that, the corals are dying. It is VERY evident.

It was a long exhausting day - 8:00am to 5:00pm on the water - but good memories were made.

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