Day 66: 20231128 Tuesday, November 28, 2023 Moore Reef, Great Barrier Reef, Queensland Australia
Some of our tour group had to get up extra early because they wanted to participate in a Koala holding photo session at a nearby hotel. We had seen this at the Mt. Tambourine Wildlife Park and at the Hartley’s Crocodile Adventure park where you pay $35 to get your photo holding a koala. In Australia, koalas are highly regulated like child actors in how many hours they can work per week and what parts of them can even be touched. Janet learned this the hard way when she asked to see a koala’s finger pad to see how koalas fingerprints can be mistaken for human finger prints. But their paws and faces are strictly off limits for touch. The people who participated said they got to hold the koalas for a New York Minute, which is just barely time enough to form your arms into a sling to receive the koala, have the koala placed in the sling, look up for a photo snap, and blink, the koala’s back out of your grasp.
Breakfast at the Cairns Pullman International was pretty much like the Hyatt- like going through the Horizon Court buffet, but mysteriously, there was no Vegemite at the toast station. Janet had to ask a server, who disappeared behind the swinging kitchen doors, and then came back with one tiny 20g bottle that would have been a perfect size for souvenir. Perhaps that is why they were not on the buffet line.
It was a brief walk to the marina from the hotel. We loaded up onto a large passenger ferry catamaran that has a capacity of close to 300 passengers. We could see the Carnival Luminosa and Viking Orion tied up at the cruise ship docks, and we passed by a Viking excursion group as it disembarked from a bus and headed toward the same marina as us.
The catamaran made a stop at Green Island, which takes about an hour. There, a majority of passengers disembarked and about half as many new passengers came aboard. Green Island is apparently a resort destination with shallow water snorkeling. The boat then journeyed another hour to an anchored pontoon platform, which acts as the mother base for operations. The pontoon has shade, changing rooms, equipment storage and processing, and a galley for serving buffet meals.
Once the ship docked with the platform, we made a beeline to the snorkeling outfitting area. There are highly poisonous jelly fish in the water this time of year, so they recommended wearing a full body lycra “Stinger Suit”. This includes long johns with stirrup feet and a close fitting hood for the head. There are sewn in hand protection mitts so the only exposed skin is the tiny bit around the edges of your mask, chin and lips. These were provided as part of the tour package, and we were able to find sizes to fit us pretty easily. These stinger suits were like full body rash guards. The standard mask, snorkel and fins were also included.
The pontoon platform has nice semi submerged platforms on each side with benches where you can get your fins on, mask adjusted and then you scoot off into the water. The water felt a little cool on initial entry, like a public swimming pool, but the water temperature was probably close to 80˚F. We snorkeled for about 45 minutes before coming back to the platform to have lunch. While getting transitioned, one of the fellow Princess excursion passengers was nearly in tears on the transitioning platform because her partner had swam off, and she was too afraid to go by herself. Janet was kind enough to agree to take her out to snorkel and hold her hand so that she could at least say she successfully snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef. Those two came back with only a half hour left before the lunch buffet shut down, so Janet had to hustle to get a bite for lunch.
The lunch buffet was nothing to write home about, but did include rice, Indonesian pork curry, chicken stew, vegetarian casserole, salad, shrimps and chicken drum sticks.
After lunch we went out for a second snorkeling session. Since snorkeling in the Galapagos several years ago, snorkeling in the Caribbean and elsewhere has generally been uniformly disappointing because snorkeling in the Galapagos is really hard to beat. Yet, we were impressed with the variety and vigorousness of the living corals around the pontoon platform. There are also lots of fish from tiny to big, but we didn’t see any sea turtles or sharks. It was certainly worth the trip. After coming back aboard, we stripped off our stinger suits and went to investigate the “Semi Submersible” which in actuality is just a glass bottom boat with viewing ports about 3-4’ below the waterline. We had missed the last sailing of it, but it was primarily intended for people who couldn’t or didn’t want to get in the water themselves. We spoke to some in our tour group who opted to do this, and they said there was no color visible from inside that “submarine”. We then went below decks to the Marine Observation station, which is basically a series of underwater windows looking out from the pontoons. The view is probably the same as the semi-submersible ride but we did see some “Scuba-Doo” riders go past the windows. This is a device with a rigid helmet over your head, and an electric water scooter you sit on and supposedly can steer and control, but what we saw were a pair of passengers being pushed along by a scuba diver from behind. It all looked a bit silly. They did push this optional excursion. We’re glad we didn’t waste the money.
They had fresh water showers on the pontoon, so we could rinse off the salt water and get dressed for the trip back to Cairns. It was a long day, but a fantastic snorkeling experience that was well organized and implemented. It was nice to see so much living coral in so many different shapes, colors and forms. Ben somehow stubbed a toe while snorkeling, but fortunately, it didn't spawn a feeding frenzy of great white sharks.
After we returned to the hotel, they had a Christmas tree lighting ceremony complete with a local children’s choir who did several angelic numbers, which filled the hotel lobby with beautiful sounds. The hotel also passed around free canapés, mulled wine, and hand pies.
We walked back to the night market and hit the Vietnamese restaurant at the entrance. Ben had a good bowl of Beef Pho, while Janet opted for a Bahn mi. Although the bread and veggies were good, she ordered meatball to avoid getting served pork belly, but the meat balls were quite wet, almost like they were scooped out of a soup bowl, rather than having been baked or fried.
Tomorrow we have to be down in the hotel lobby by 5am with our luggage ready to go aboard the coach. We fly to Uluru tomorrow morning.
