Big Poppa Arrives and we make a Scuba! (Part 1 of 2)

Dad got into Sydney just fine and we got a little off on our sleep schedule. We had to go get him at the airport at 8AM, needless to say we were all sleep deprived by the mid-afternoon so we layed down for a little nap around 4. We awoke around 9-10PM and so went into a nocturnal spell, which was broken by our 4:15 AM wake up to fly to Cairns. We stayed up all day finally and were set back on track after an early sleep and an 8AM wake up for our first day of Scuba lessons. Or as our instructor Nico put it "go to make a scuba!"

We had two days of pool training and theory lectures, which weren't really that bad. Dad was the only old man around and it took him a little while to get into the groove. This was probably due to the fact that he's been around long enough to know you're not supposed to breathe underwater... the rest of us just went for it. I just decided to pretend I was a fish... a fish with a giant tank on my back, a hose in my mouth, and a plastic contraption to keep the water out of my eyes.

The course went by fairly easily and we boarded the boat in the morning to transfer us out the great barrier reef. The night before we left we went to a great barrier reef class thing to learn about the reef. They told us about good fish, bad fish, 1 fish, 2 fish, red fish, blue fish, jellyfish, smelly fish, big belly fish, and country grammar Nelly fish (he's a rapper). The most interesting of all things though was the flatworm called the pseudobiceros hancockanus (did not make that second name ups at all). It is a genus of hermaphroditic flatworm, which engages in penis fencing with another flatworm. One will win by stabbing the other in it's penis sword 5 or 6 times, injecting sperm into it. The injector becomes the father and swims away to weiner-spar once more. The injectee settles down, buys a Martha Stewart book, bakes cookies, and settles into motherhood for the baby flatworms. Australia is a weird place.

Unfortunately during our scubas we didn't come across any of these fascinating wormoids. We hopped into the ocean for the first time at around 1PM. It was not like the pool training. They pretty much just throw you into the ocean, very rushed, and you look under the water to what's going on. We saw quite a few fish about the size of our heads swimming under the boat... and then blue nothingness. It is pretty crazy, it is just a fuzzy blue abyss. I kept thinking a shark was going to just appear out of it heading right for us, but they told me that wouldn't be so. For some reason I believed them and we started our descent...

The reef wasn't as far down as we thought, just the visibility was poor, so that was actually a relief. It is a really wild experience. All of a sudden you're just underwater, still breathing, not knowing if everything is normal or not, but it feels pretty normal. Dad was my buddy, but he wasn't doing so hot, so I kept looking after him while trying to view the reef a little bit and get my bearings. It's really unexplainable, it is just wild. Dad had some problems throughout the dive and at the end decided that diving just wasn't his thing. We were really proud of him for going down though because he was totally not into it, but we made him try it anyways. He was happy to have tried, but retired to the sun deck with a rum and coke for the remainder of the day.

We moved reef locations and had another dive at 4PM. First we snorkeled, which was really cool at the new reef location since it was built up so close to the surface. After about 20 minutes snorkeling, we got our tanks back on for our second dive, which was pleasant. We were getting more used to it now, which was good. At night there was an optional night dive, which the instructor takes you on in pairs of two so Derek and I decided we would do it. Then after the 4PM dive Derek was feeling a bit light-headed and decided to sit the night dive out. I didn't know whether to do it or not...