At the GREAT BARRIER REEF!!

What an amazing day!! We went both snorkling and Scuba Diving at the great barrier reef!

our day started nice an early! we had to be at the boat by 8am before we headed off in the direction of the reef! It was a nice bumpy ride! beautiful water and sun amazing! Catie however couldn't wait till the boat stopped! her poor motion sickness got the better of her this time! so she spent most the ride looking into a paper bag. poor girl! went we finally got there it was so beautiful! we started off by snorkling! we throw on the flippers grabbed the masks and hopped into the water! its alittle disorientating at first until you realize you can breath with your head under the water! then its so cool! and the view once you put your head under the water was breath taking! with the sun shinign through the water you see the reef and all the colourful fish that live there!

and then as we were looking at this particularly colourful fish we saw him!! a reef shark! it swam right under us! it was so freaky! we froze in our tracks! so beautiful! so deadly!! after that we kept snorkling and found nemos and dorri! and so many cool looking fish it was unbelievable! i saw a fish fight another fish! or maybe they just ran into each other i dunno, but so cool!

then everyone hopped back onto the boat and we moved to another part of the reef were we got to do our first dive!!! we got all the instructions about how to equalize the pressure in our ears and to watch the gauge that tells you how much air you have and to make sure you never hold your breath!! your lungs could expand and you could die!!!!

then we put the gear on and jumped in the water! its such a weird feeling being able to put your body under water and still breath properly! well i was apparently not breathing properly, i was taking in more oxygen then everyone else so i was the one who ran out of oxygen first! well there is actually a red zone on your gauge and if you get in that red zone you have to go back to the boat. so i showed the instructor and he started leading us back to the boat, i don't think he realized how deep i was breathing cus i was running out of air faster than he thought i was. by the time i was half way up to the boat i started sucking the air in deep, (cus there wasn't much left) adn that made him move me faster! i was pushed to the top and had only a fraction of air left!! close call!!!

Naturally we did a second dive after that!! even though i ran out of air the first time the experience of being in the water wiht the fish like that is amazing! and apparantly i was a real natural at it! the instructor said so!! i caught on so fast and was swimming really fast! so fun! so the second time was even better because we didn't have to do all the safty stuff first! we knew the drill! and when we were down there was saw turtles! like in finding nemo!! we found Crush!! and we saw sting rays!! so cool looking! and the way they move is insane! and we saw huge clams! and we got to touch it!!! and it moves when you touch it! so crazy!! and then when we were heading back to the boat we saw another SHARK!!!! i saw it first out of the corner of my eye! so i started pointing to it and making the signal of HOLY CRAP THERES A SHARK! and then everyone else saw it and we just stayed perfectly still! and it got closer and started to circle us! and then as it got closer to me it turned so that it was facing me dead on and swam closer before quickly turning and swimming away! it got so close to us! it was unreal and really scary!!! once it was gone we worked our way back up to the boat. once on the boat and everyone had their masks off i looked over at one of the girls who was diving with us and she had a BLEEDING NOSE!!! no wonder the shark was circling us!!! holy crap!!!

but what an experience!!! after that we did one more snorkle and then headed back to shore!

What an amazing day!!

i can't believe we are actually doing all this stuff!!!