Aussie 3: Scuba Dive on The Great Barrier Reef and Townsville

In continuation from: Aussie 2: Melbourne and The Boxing Day Ashes Test

Beautiful Sunset over Townsville

Having enjoyed the first session of Boxing Day Cricket test at MCG, we immediately drove to the Melbourne Airport to catch our flight to Townsville. The reason we wanted to go to Townsville was to scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef. Most people go to the city of Cairns for Great Barrier Reef. However I decided to go to Townsville as the flights to and from here were relatively cheaper and we hardly had time to explore a huge city like Cairns. 

The Great Barrier Reef

We spent the 3 hour flight to Townsville completing our quota of sleep. Townsville airport was pretty small and we were told to walk to the terminal building upon leaving the plane. 

Friend ready to jump into the water

Corals 

When the taxi dropped us in front of our hotel, I couldn't help but admire the location of our hotel Aquarius on the Beach. Located right on the Strand, the hotel offered great views of the beach and the waterfront. Thankfully, we were allotted ocean facing rooms on the 11th floor providing beautiful panoramic views from the balcony. Even though we had a pretty early day and were slightly tired, we decided to go down and have a short walk on the Strand. There is a nice walkway here hugging the beach with a number of lawns on the sides. Even though Townsville is only a small town, it has a good number of restaurants, even India restaurants, and a Casino as well. 

Dive guide pointing out a Sea Slug to me!!

Beautifully coloured fish all around

After the walk, we went to an Indian restaurant for early dinner as we wanted to sleep early today. While we were having dinner there, a number of non-Indian customers came in to get themselves Indian food. It was clear that in this part of the world, Indian food is quite popular. 

A Boring Clam is called so 'cause its so so boring

Back at hotel, we spent some time playing cards in the balcony before hitting the bed. However, I was unsure whether to sleep immediately or watch Manchester United play Hull city in the English Premier League. Finally I decided to remain awake for a couple more hours to watch my favourite football club play. It was well worth it as the match was quite interesting and resulted in a Manchester United victory. 

A Jellyfish just below the surface

Next morning, we woke up early, picked our swim wear and went to Townsville Breakwater Marina from where our ferry to the the Barrier reef was to depart. Here, we were provided with our diving gear and once everyone has the gear of their required size, we boarded the ferry and settled in for a 2.5 hour ride into the ocean. 

Its a different world down here

I had always wondered what Great Barrier Reef would look like but I never thought it would be like it was when I actually saw it. In the middle of the ocean with no islands around, the depth of the ocean came down to just about 10-30 meters. And we could see a number of beautifully colored corals with some equally vibrantly colored fishes swimming among them. 

The fish that threatened me!!

So perfectly camouflaged

Once the ferry stopped, we squeezed into our diving gear, put on our scuba tanks and jumped into the water. The first time divers went with a instructor in pairs while four of us, certified divers, went in with one dive guide only. The dive site had perfect diving conditions with great visibility and optimum water temperature. Also, thanks to the corals, there was a good amount of fish life in the area. We saw fishes like parrot fish, butterfly fish, a solitary lionfish and a couple of Barracudas. Other than these, we saw some Boring Clams and some Jellyfish right beneath the surface. Jellyfish look beautiful and harmless but their sting can be enough to ruin your diving pleasure for a while. However, this is just like most of the creatures under water or even above it, who don't really intend to harm us humans. They harm only when we try to hurt them or surprise them leading to a panic attack.

Me posing underwater

Butterfly Fish

The first dive was followed by a quick lunch on the boat. For the second dive, the dive guide just took us in a different direction. This was unlike my previous experiences when the boat was moved to a different point for the second dive. This 2nd dive was slightly more interesting than the first one as we moved close to a wall in this one and there were number of fishes hanging around the plants there. There was one particular gray colored fish about a feet long that came towards my face a number of times. I felt as if it was threatening me to move away so I obeyed its orders and moved quickly. After this dive, we came up, washed ourselves with a fresh water shower and took a seat on the top to move back to Townsville. While we were moving back, a group of Dolphins accompanied us for sometime.

When your oxygen ends, you can use your partner's oxygen like this

Dolphins

We reached Townsville by 5 in the evening. The sandwiches we had for lunch on the boat weren't filling enough, so we decided to grab a meal at an Indian restaurant. After the meal, we took a taxi that drove us 2.6 kms to the top of Castle Hill. Castle Hill is a 286 m high pink granite monolith that towers above the town of Townsville. This offers numerous vantage points offering views to as far as Magnetic Island. This hill was used as a communications and observation post during World War II. Nowadays, many locals walk up the Castle Hill for regular exercise. While we were roaming around the Hynes Lookout clicking pictures of the panoramic views, a number of locals were running along the stairs working on their fitness.

Posers

Us

There are a couple more places worth visiting in Townsville namely Reef HQ and Billabong Sanctuary. We couldn't visit these because of a lack of time. Hence, I would recommend visiting Townsville for a minimum of 3-4 days so that you don't miss out on these sites. For Indian food, the best Indian restaurant was Alishaan, just near The Strand. This night, we had a long sleep and woke up late in the morning. After a quick breakfast, we hopped in to a taxi to the airport to catch our flight to SYDNEY!!

Panoramic view from the Castle Hill

Read the next part here: Sydney and the SKYDIVE

Andamans: Green Waters n Blue Skies

After planning for years, finally I managed to make this a reality. We(3 friends n me) booked a flight to Andamans about 1.5 months in advance and then I started to look for a place to stay at and a dive institute to dive with. After talking to a lot of friends and researching on tripadvisor.com, I finally zeroed down on Barefoot Scuba and DIveandamans(Island Vinnie's). I sent a mail to both of them, but it was Barefoot's instant responses that made sure that I would stay and dive with them.

As I had already dived in Phuket, Thailand I wanted to do a certification course now. Then came the complications. We were flying into Port Blair on 6th noon and flying back on 10th morning. In all, I had just 3 full days there. But the certification course required 4 days. I spoke to Barefoot people and they suggested that I do e-learning to save a day which I actually did. Next came the issue of flying back. Somehow, the flights back from Port Blair are so scheduled that the last flight leaves before 1st ferry from Havelock reaches Port Blair. So we had to book the expensive but brilliant seaplane to come back from Havelock on 10th morning and fly back to Delhi.

DAY 1: After researching a bit on places to stay in Port Blair, we reached there on 6th morning and I asked the Taxiwala to take us to Megapode Nest to check for availability there. We got lucky and got 2 Nicobari Cottages there. Again, this was pretty costly but the cottages were brilliant with balcony opening onto the sea and a window opening into the woods. We wanted to visit Cellular Jail that very day, but it being Good Friday, the jail was closed. So we visited Ross Island that day. The island is pretty small with ruins of british establishments there. This was their headquarters in Andamans and the place from where they enjoyed while our freedom fighters toiled in the jail. We came back from there in just an hours and enjoyed our awesome balcony view for the evening.

DAY 2: Next day, we left for Havelock in Makruzz. The sail was pretty beautiful but they wouldn't allow the passengers to go onto the deck which made the 1.5 hour ride quite boring. After taking a small nap, we docked onto Havelock Jetty and I immediately took notice of the green waters. I had assumed Havelock to be a bit sparsely occupied but it was full of tourists and a number of auto rickshaws were there to take us to our resort. Once at the resort, I immediately started with my course and learnt how to use and maintain my scuba gear after giving a small test. After that, we went for working on a few skills on a beach to simulate confined water dives. Slept early to wake up for open water diving next day.

DAY 3: I woke up at 6 and after having some fruits for breakfast went to the dive shop where our diving gear was ready. Our first diving site was Lighthouse which is a reef near an old lighthouse. The sail to the divesite was beautiful with morning sun making the green reflections look just the perfect shade of green. Here we had a 45 min dive upto a depth of 11.2m with some skills training in between. During a skill in which I was supposed to let go off my regulator and breathe using my buddy's alternate air source, I put the alternate source upside down into my mouth and failed to breathe. After fumbling a bit, I tried making an ascent to get air. Thankfully, my divemaster was quick enough to purge and put my regulator into my mouth before that. The relief of getting air to breathe when you have run out of it is incomparable to any other pleasures of life. Our next divesite was MV Mars which is a wreck bottomed at about 18-20m into the water. A wreck provides fishes plenty of places to stay n play around, so there were plenty of small fishes here. While swimming around the ship's deck and Captain's cabin, I tried visualizing what might have happened on that fateful night. After reaching back in our resort, we washed our scuba gear and got our first Dive Log, which we immediately filled and got stamped from our instructor. It was a tiring day, so we just chilled out in the resort and went to Full Moon Cafe in Island Vinnie's for dinner. The restaurant at barefoot Scuba, Cafe del Mar is pretty ordinary but decent considering its a resort totally focused on diving.

DAY 4: Today we were going to make deeper dives. Also, our divesite was pretty far from the resort. It took us about 1 hour to reach there. The sail took us around a couple of small islands and we couldn't just stop appreciating the color of the sea while also speculating on the possibility of salt water crocodiles in the marshlands. The name of our 1st divesite was i-95(we had no idea why it was called so). Here there were plenty whip corals which seemed like sticks planted into the bottom. Here we went to a depth of 17.4m and saw some long fin bannerfish and moon wrasse(failed to identify the rest of the fishes ). The real surprise awaited me, when we reached the surface. As I am not a good swimmer, so I was afraid of a swim-test of 200m required by PADI for this certification. We came up pretty far from our boat, and our instructor told us to remove our weight-belts and BCDs and swim to the boat using masks and snorkel. It looked tough as there was a slight current taking us away from the boat, but the fins and extra buoyancy provided by salt water made swimming much easier than in a pool and I managed to reach the boat!!  Next was a 10 min float test, which was a cakewalk thanks to salt-water providing buoyancy. Our next divesite is called The Wall as its a 50m deep almost vertical wall under the sea. There was a strong current here and loosening grip on our rope could have meant a tiring swim back to the boat. Thankfully the current was much weaker under water and we could enjoy our final dive without tiring much.

Today, I went to Radhanagar beach after coming back from the dives. The drive to Radhanagar or beach number 7 was very pleasing to the eye as we moved through what seemed like a jungle with very sparse housing to disturb us. This beach is ranked highly among the best beaches in Asia and it clearly deserves it. The sands are flawless and the beach is not littered like most other beaches in India. After enjoying the sunset here, we rode back to our resort to pack for our early morning departure from Havelock next day.

DAY 5: Although this sounds like the end of the trip, but even this was as serene as I could have dreamed of. We hopped onto the 8 seater seaplane and apart from the luxury it felt like, the aerial view of the islands provided us with the best pictures in the entire trip. Upon reaching Port Blair, we decide that we had just enough time to visit Cellular Jail. So we called our old Taxiwalla to come and pick us up from the defense airfield, where we landed and take us to the famed, Saja-e Kalapani. We visited the jail in a whirlwind, but I personally couldn't appreciate it enough because of all the new paint and beautification which didn't allow us to feel the original fear of the place. Finally at 12 noon, we bid adieu to the heavenly Andamans and hopped for our 5 hour flight back home. A much desired trip finally done.