Travel// Australia: The Great Barrier Reef

I’ve been feeling a little over the place recently… I’ll feel great one day with lots of motivation and then the next I’ll just be ergh! Life is full of ups and downs and I do feel a little guilty about feeling down when things are going well… I find in winter we make the most of keeping in from the cold and chilling and I can get feel down in the dumps. I can’t wait for it to get warmer for us to get out and enjoy the weather and get out for some walks. 

It’s been what feels like a lifetime since we were in Australia… over 2 months ago now! Time has just flown by… Last night we finally got our photo album for Australia sorted – it took a little while to get the photos down but we got them down to 570 and into the photo album JWe’ve been meaning to get our latest trips all printed out and into albums – these days so many of our pics are just on our phones that they could easily be lost and then all our pics are gone. So we’ve started getting them printed off when there’s a deal and popping them in albums.

So here’s the next instalment of the Australia recap! The Great Barrier Reef!

The Great Barrier Reef was a must for us – it’s one of the natural wonders of the world and we wanted to see it before it was effected more by climate change. It was the most amazing experience and something we’ll both always remember.

To make the most of the experience we decided to spend the night on The Great Barrier Reef and if you get the chance to do it we’d 100% recommend it. We booked it through STA and it was through Sunlover by Starlight. We walked down to the Reef Fleet Terminal from our Airbnb and got there for 8:30am – the heat up in Queensland was unreal so it was already hot hot hot by 8am. After checking in we jumped on the boat to make its way to Moore Reef which took about 2 hrs. I’d say beware because it can be a choppy and there were lots of people being sea sick on the way over… 

You get lunch provided on the boat but to be honest that was the one thing about the whole thing which wasn’t great. The food provided once everyone leaves is much better and tastes so much more fresh – guess they’re just catering to 8 people rather than over 200!

There’s lots of options of things to do during the day but we mainly just went snorkelling and we saw turtles which was insane! Definitely one of the highlights of the whole holiday! When the day trippers left there were only 8 of us left with 3 instructors which was a nice change. We went out on a glass bottom boat tour for an hr which was great and when we got back had a tasty BBQ dinner. We had access to hot showers so we could freshen up.

Our double swag for the night

That night we slept in swag bags and Tim and I had a double swag which was nice! They were set up on the top deck out in the open which would have been great if the weather was nice but there was a storm and lots of wind which meant we didn’t get much sleep. I mean it was a great experience but now we’ve done it I don’t think we will again. Before bed we all laid back on bean bags and did some stargazing. It was out of this world – I’ve never seen so many stars… 

What a gorgeous sunset
Sunrise…

We set our alarm for 5am to see the sun rise but it was raining and cloudy so we didn’t get to see the sun rise. The sunset the previous day was definitely better! We went back to bed for a couple hrs and then got into our stingersuits for a snorkelling safari at 8am. It was a nice way to see the reef without loads of people being around. Now let’s be honest… I was nervous about sharks and there were so many jelly fish around with the storm that morning. But it was great and I’m so glad we did it! We saw so many amazing fish and the coral was pretty impressive. 

After a refreshing shower we had breakfast and then Tim popped out for some solo snorkelling before all the crowds descended. He had a good 45 mins out there and he got some amazing pics!

When we had the whole area to snorkel by ourselves

Once all the day trippers descended we just popped ourselves down on some chairs at the top and watched the world go by. We’d already done all the activities so just chilled. We did go out on the glass bottom boat tour again before we left to pass the time by before jumping on the main boat to get seats before heading back to mainland. 

Overall it was an out of this world experience and we’re so glad we did it. The highlight had to be a turtle popping its head up right in front of us and swimming near us. Just incredible! Something we’ll never forget <3

Here’s some more pics to scroll through…

(We forgot to set the date on the camera so ignore all the 2015 dates!)

There were so many moon jellyfish! Didn’t freak me out at all… :p

Until next time,

Cathers xx

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