Monday, July 21, 2008

Back from the Whitsundays!

I'm back from sailing. Arrived in Airlie Beach around noon and have been hanging out with people from the boat all afternoon.

I leave on the greyhound tonight to Hervey Bay. Until then I am going to be meeting with the people from the boat for a couple hours to have drinks and dinner and say goodbye.

The trip itself was nice. It wasn't as nice as the Pro Dive trip I did to the outer barrier reef last week but it was still good. The boat was smaller, probably about half as big with the same number of people and only 2 bathrooms. I think the crampedness was the only bad part of it.

I did 3 dives this time and I enjoyed them but they weren't as nice as the other trip either. The visibility under the water wasn't as clear (10m vs. 15m) and I didn't see anything special, like turtles or massive fish or sharks or a lionfish. The water probably just wasn't as clear because there's a lot more divers here than there were at the outer reef, so that means that more people are kicking up sand and also running into corals and stuff like that.

The dives weren't too expensive, I paid $110 AUD for the 3 of them. That's not half bad.

I think I'm starting to get a pretty nice tan finally. I'm currently uploading the pictures from this weekend up on my gallery, so they'll all be there soon.

One thing that was interesting about this trip was that I was 1 of 4 certified divers and there were about 20 people just doing intro dives. I felt like a veteran. The dive instructor was giving a lecture on the basics of diving on Saturday and he went through everything really fast. He actually told them that the dive computers that they'll be carrying on their gear are nothing they will need to be worried about, it just tells the instructor when you're going to die (which is actually true) but I laughed out loud when he said it that way to the beginners. I guess that's what you get when that's all the time you have to learn.

The intro divers are basically people who want to try diving but are not working toward certification. It's just a 1 day basic lesson on here's what to do and you have to be with the instructor at all times. They also have a max depth of 12m, which is still pretty far if you think about it.

My bus ride tonight will be 13 hours long. :) My bb has not been charged all weekend and so I can't really listen to music tonight either. Hopefully I won't have to sit next to some smelly bastard again on the bus. I'm crossing my fingers.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jim,
Recently, I have had a gift from a Korean bank named DYNAMO RADIO FLASHLIGHT WITH ALARM. It is a small gear but has many function as the name shows. It is a self charging system by cranking 2-3times a minute. It also has cell phone charging access with different type of connectors. You may find it somewhere there too.
size - 140 x 210mm like small flashlight. Price, i think, less than 10 dollars.

July 22, 2008 at 6:35 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

again? you sat next to a smelly bastard before?

July 23, 2008 at 8:33 PM  
Blogger Jimmy said...

Yeah I did actually. The first time I sat on the bus I couldn't sleep at all until this guy next to me got off.

August 5, 2008 at 7:56 PM  

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