The Great Barrier Reef

Hello again,

Hopefully this will be a shorter one as I haven't left it too long.

After a few weeks of seeing what Australia was like and as quickly as possible I managed to finally get to the dive boat fit and ready to dive. I had booked myself onto a liveaboard called Taka (http://www.taka.com.au/index.htm) for 4 days of diving on the outer reef away from the masses of snorklers and backpackers doing their PADI courses. This was a good choice as I have done enough diving to be called an experienced diver by some and the inner reef is swamped with huge party boats full of pissed up backpackers. Some of these boats carry as many as 450 people who they dump onto the reef daily. From the point of view of someone who likes their diving this is not ideal and it would have been a waste of money.

I found from other people that the conditions on the reef were fairly rough and had taken precautions by taking my sickness pills well in advance. The weather report read 25 to 30 knott winds with 2 to 3 metre waves and as I went to get picked up I noticed the wind was very strong and there was intermitant torrential rain. We were taken to the boat which was not full with 28 guests thanks to it still being early in the season. The boat was exactly as in the brochure and was absolutely fantastic. It was only a year old and had been designed specificaly for the trips made to the outer reef. Being very wide it was very spacious and comfortable as well as being bery stable. The first night was spent steaming out to the Cod Hole on the Northern Reef. We had a very nice dinner and had our briefing before being paired up with our buddies. This was the first time I had been diving abroad without my usual buddy Jon and I was hopeful that I would get someone half decent. Some people just buddied with the guy sitting next to them but I ended up being paired with someone with the most similar experience and this ended up being with a medical student from Taiwan called Michael. He seemed a bit quiet and we tried to have a chat but it didn't go very well. He seemed very preoccupied with what camera I had and proceeded to ask a lot of questions about me but was very dissapointed by my answers. I guess it was early days but he didn't seem very impressed with me and didn't want to relax and talk about anything normal. When he produced a PADI Master Scuba Diver card I thought, 'great he's at least got lots of experience, I'll be safe'.

The next morning we went for our first dive on the Cod Hole and all seemed ok. My air consumption was very high but I had expected that. I was a bit dissapointed with my buddy though as he didn't want to communicate at under water and generally swam around with his camera pressed against his mask. I had lost my bearings a bit but there was a system as always to retrieve divers who get a bit far from the boat. We came up a bit too far to swim and I signalled for a rib to come and tow us. This was really cool! Basically they fling a rope off the back and you hang on while they drag you along the surface. It was great I got to see the whole dive site again without swimming! Michael was less impressed as the rope 'made his hands hurt', ahh bless. He was also less than impressed with my air consumption and the fact that we had to end the dive all of 5 minutes before the 50 minute limit set by the boat. I can understand that but his rolling of eyeballs and look of disgust at 25 meters was not appropriate especially as he had decided we would swim off and look at nothing at around 29 meters for most of the dive.

This general level of communication went on for the next day and was a shame. Michael's issuing of instructions like 'I will go to 30 meters and I want you to stay at 20 watching me so you don't use too much air' went down really well too and I started to get nervous about the fact that I was paired up with the buddy from hell. Basically I felt nervous about being in the water with him and this culminated in me doing my favourite nervous trick of forgetting my weight belt! Hoorah! We had a long surface swim out to a bommie and when we went to descend.... well... I didn't! Michael on the other hand went all the way down ignoring my attempts to get his attention and dissapeared into the murky blue depths. Fantastic! I wasn't the only one. Another chap forgot too. The boat was swinging around like crazy and having been called back I had a hard swim. At the boat they asked where by buddy was.... 'He went down without me!'... 'What!'.... 'Yes I know!!!' So I put the belt on and basically had no option but to swim all the way out to find him as I couldn't leave him on his own. So I swam back out. Got stung all the way up the side of my head by a blue bottle jelly fish (christ that hurt) and descended solo after him with my face and neck stinging like mad. At least a solo descent was more pleasant than one with freak boy next to me. At the bottom I found him with his camera attached to his face photographing more rocks! He seemed uninterested in my presence and swam off. I have to say I was tempted to just swim off solo but didn't.

Anyway back on the boat he got bollocked as soon as we got back but didn't seem to get it. Being absolutely furious I went and simmered down for a bit and was told that there were 4 great whalers in the water. Grey Whalers are nice big proper mean looking sharks and I had done 2 completely solo surface swims... ok they may be harmless but I wasn't happy. Sharks like people flapping around on their own on the surface cos they think you're a seal and I had done a very good impression of a seal that day! Ah well I survived.

Chatting about the experience with another diver I found he was having similar trouble with his buddy and we arranged a switch. This was especially good for me as Michael was insisting on a guide for every dive because in his words 'I get lost under water a lot because I want to take pictures'. The guide turned out to be the Japanese guide laid on for the 2 Japanese speaking divers who also had cameras surgically attached to their heads and spent most dives swimming at great speed into people, fish and rocks to get the picture they wanted. One American diver expressed that he had contemplated grabbing one of their inflaters and sending them to the surface after being kicked in the face and barged one time too many. I was amazed on one dive to witness one of these guys swim up behind another diver, grab her tank and move her out of the way so he could get a picture of a shell or something! I was speechless! So I left Michael to carry on with his friends and buddied up with an American called Sean and had a thoroughly good dive trip after that. We may even hook up in the States and do a couple of dives when I get there. I had grown very tired of Michaels robot like personality and monosilabic conversation....FREAK! The relief was immense and I became so much more relaxed.

We did some good night dives too. On one in particular we kitted up way in advance of everyone else and had the pitch black reef all to ourselves nearly swimming into a nice white tip reef shark which appeared out of the dark looking for it's dinner. It was cool. The conditions were good under the surface but I must say the diving was a little underwhelming. The Red Sea is much better. It also made me realise how much I like wreck diving. As far as wind, waves and current go it was like diving in the UK. On the last night we had a very rough cruise outside the reef in very strong winds and a 3 metre sea. Not feeling very good in bed I went up on deck and hung onto the side rail whilst the boat swung violently through a full 90 degrees. My feet left the ground several times and walking around required short sprints between rails. I got completely soaked but had to stay out there for over an hour or else I was going to be very ill. Character building stuff as was the 6am dive the next morning. Diving is such a rediculous sport. Grown men and women dressing in rubber and jumping into shark infested rough cold water to take bad out of focus, under exposed pictures of shrimp! I think I must be a freak for enjoying it.

After 11 dives and a very rough steam home we arrived back in Cairns. The very rough conditions meant that we had not been able to go out to the shark feed as the captain decided it was too rough and unsafe... I dread to think what that would have been like. In port I was knackered. I had met some guys on the boat who were all dive masters having working the coast. Matteas from Switzerland, Wachim from Catalunia, and Daniel from Spain and we went to find a room at Leo's. It's a dodgey looking place but the guys are fun and I actually really like the place now. The owner is a cocky difficult guy at first but the place actually is very well run and has some character as well as being cheap and in the centre of town. In true diving fashion the drinking began quite early and after a while we were joined by others from the boat including an Aussie from Sydney called Gerard who was gonna show us how it's done and drink us under the table with his drinking games. He looked a bit like Chris Isaaks but was a complete dick and after about 3 hours he was stumbling around dribbling over one unwelcoming girl after another uncharming them with his incomprehensible bollocks. It was so funny to watch. Matteas and Wachim were flagging a bit too by now and went home while Gerard dissappeared into the dissabled toilet.

Me and a few others including the party animal Daniel went to the Woolshed. This is the local meat market full of English and Irish. The evening went on till the early hours and I managed to avoid several fights. It's such a crap hole. Next day we met up with Sean and went to spend our hangovers at the cinema. I also met up with Diana the Dane who I had met on the trip to Darwin which was cool. And that's where I am now, in Cairns and thinking of ways to fill in the time before I head off to chilly New Zealand on Tuesday.

This was supposed to be a short email but so much for that. Thanks for the emails it was good to hear from people.

All my love,

Kaveh.