Which way to the reef?

My first week at 'home' began the most challenging week of my professional career. The project’s deployment manager (i.e. in charge of all of the other consultants on the project) is… let’s just say difficult. He had a very different expectation of what my role is on the project, and we had a very heated debate for a half hour one day on what I was in Sydney to do. At one point he said, “If you aren’t going to do this, then why do I need you here?”

He’s a very in-your-face guy and I had to remind him in the nicest way possible that he was not my boss and that I answer to people in the US. It came to a point where I said to myself to stay calm or I could be on a flight home the next day.  Afterward I went outside and blew some steam with a coworker (not surprisingly many people on the project have similar feelings about this guy).  We had a conference call with the team in the US and ironed it all out, and he hasn’t asked me for anything since then – smooth sailing on that front. Even with that extra burden off my shoulders, I have been scrambling around to try to meet deadlines. I’m enjoying the challenge of it all but the days can get stressful.

Partly because of the workload and partly because we had a long weekend for Anzac Day (Australia’s version of Memorial Day for WWI), I decided to take a trip. I wasn’t sure when the next time I would get to go away would be, so I jumped at the chance. A few coworkers recommended that I go to Cairns (pronounced “Cans”) and visit the reef. The plane ticket prices were a bit steep but I was sold.

I skipped out of work early on Friday – hey, I worked 13 hours on my birthday (last Tuesday, woohoo) and put in around 50 for the week. I have a few trips home planned over the next 6 months but I don’t know when I will get another chance for a 3 day weekend here in Australia. The flight was 3 hours and went fairly quickly. You don’t realize it, but Australia is a pretty big island/country/continent. The Aussie girl sitting next to me (named Georgia, strangely enough) and I chatted the whole way, but she didn’t seem to keen on hanging out with all of her friends she was meeting up with. Ah, well.

Another coworker tip pointed me to stay at Gilligan’s Backpackers Resort and Hotel, which is a fancy term for a really nice hostel. If you’re going to Cairns, that’s where you want to stay. Everyone I met during the weekend was staying there as well. After checking into my room, an 8 bed dorm full of Brits (more on that later), I headed down to the tourism office to plan the weekend.

I knew I wanted to snorkel and was tempted to try to scuba although I hadn’t done it since Matt and I went back in 2004. I didn’t have my PADI license with me, so I wasn’t sure what the rules were around that. The agent booked me on an all day trip on Sunday out to the reef with Passions of Paradise for $129 which included 2 snorkeling sessions (or scuba for ~$100 more) and lunch. For Saturday he gave me a bunch of options – bungee jumping, sky diving, rainforest tour, white water rafting… nothing really caught my eye and they were all in the $100-300 range, so I decided to take it easy and chill for a day.  It seemed that all of the things to do in the city were actually things to do outside of the city.  There were a few souvenir shops but not much else downtown.

Although I was alone (once again) in a new place, with really no plan on what to do or where to go, Gilligan’s made it easy to connect with people. I think backpackers in general are more open to temporary friends and letting you join up with them because many travel alone. For those of you that are apprehensive about seeing the world this way – it’s not as hard as you think. Plus, Gilligan’s had two bars – an outdoor beach style bar connected to an indoor club style bar. There was also a swimming pool complete with waterfall and cafeteria style restaurant (that turned into the club at night).

The east coast of Australia seems to be teeming with young British travelers on working holidays. They come over here for 6 months or a year and travel from city to city, finding work where they can. I think 75% of the people I met were British and looking for work in Cairns. The city itself is small and somewhat boring. Unless you’re in the tourism trade, I really don’t know what the allure would be to stay there. One girl in my room was from Wales and had been in the hostel for a week. She was running out of money so she just hung out in the room most nights. I guess that’s all part of their journey…

Back to the timeline… Friday night I heard about the Cairns "Frog and Toad" pub crawl. Since I had so much fun on the Santiago pub crawl a few months ago (I think I forgot to blog about it?), I decided to go. I paid $20 which gave you free food at the pub, a drink at each of the 4 bars and free entrance into a club at the end. The organizer saw that I was alone and pointed me toward a table of, you guessed it, Brits. There were 2 guys and 4 girls sitting around a table, so I approached:

“Hi, I’m here by myself. Can I join y’all*?” me (as I bend down on the stool)
“Someone is sitting there.” Girl #1
“Oh, I’ll move when they ---” me
“NOOOO!” Girl #2
*I find that breaking out “y’all” in Australia is a good thing every now and then – they seem to be intrigued by the accent.

At this point I was kind of hovering over the chair, not sure about the hostile environment I had stumbled into. I looked at one of the guys and his eyes got really big because he was shocked at the girls’ reactions. He (Mark) motioned for me to sit down and introduced himself. Girl #2 turned and introduced herself as well, which confused me. Mark asked her why she screamed at me, but she explained that she was yelling at her friend (Girl #1) to let me sit down.

Girl #1 (Emma) was a bit upset and got up from the table, but Girl #2 (Sarah) explained… a few of them had been traveling for months and knew how hard it was to meet people and go out when you’re alone. Emma was just here on vacation for a few weeks and wasn’t up on the backpacker culture. From that point on I knew we were cool and had a great night with them all. We all stayed together for the rest of the pub crawl. I exchanged numbers with Mark and we made plans to meet up the next night as well.  Mark and Sarah are pictured on the right, with their British, sombrero friend Dean and the pub crawl organizer.

I woke up on Saturday glad that I had no obligations and could just relax. Planning nothing ended up being a good decision because it started pouring down rain and didn’t stop all day. I bought an umbrella and explored the city for a while, but there was really nothing to see if you weren’t shopping for souvenirs. There is no beach in Cairns. The ‘stingers’ (box jellyfish) are among the most poisonous in the world and frequent the area, and the orientation of the land and reef 50 km out to sea prevents waves. The shoreline looked more like a swamp that went out for a few hundred yards. It was full of mud and bugs and you could see crabs crawling everywhere. There was a big public pool on the coast called The Lagoon, but because of the weather there were very few people swimming. I turned back, picked up my latest book (Catch-22) and read for the rest of the day.

I went out to dinner with Natalie (pictured), my bunkmate from Essex, and then met back up with Mark, Sarah and their crew for a few drinks at Gilligan’s. Because Sunday was Anzac day, all of the bars had to close at midnight. That was fine by me because I had to be at the pier at 7:30 in the morning for my reef trip. The night ended on a low key note and I turned in hoping the rain would stop.

The morning started off well when the sun peaked through the clouds. I met Amy (Scottish) and Eryca (Brazilian) behind me in line for the boat and chatted all of the 2 hours out to the reef. One of the boat staff came around and got us all to sign forms and waivers for snorkeling and asked if we were certified to scuba. I said I was but didn’t have my license, so she gave me a 10 question multiple choice quiz. I got 9/10 correct and somehow remembered a lot of the hand signals used underwater (out of air, I’m ok, something’s wrong, etc). She cleared me to scuba if I wanted to shell out the extra money and I was convinced.  It was $70 extra for your first dive and $45 for the second.

I was a bit nervous starting out since it had been such a long time. Luckily they connected all of the hoses for the tank – I definitely didn’t remember all of that. There were only 3 of us plus a guide doing the dive, the rest of the ~30 people on board were getting ready to scuba. We got in the water and started to go down and almost immediately my mask started letting water in. I didn’t panic since I knew how to clear my mask (tilt your head back and exhale out your nose as you press on the eyebrow area of the mask and pull up on the cheekbone area). That got the water out, but it immediately started again.

I was only down a few meters so I came back up to the top, took the mask off and tried to retighten it. The guide came up as well and suggested that I try his spare. I put it on and went back down to the same result. I tried to bear it and went down about 3 meters this time, but my mask totally filled with water and clearing didn’t work. I felt my breathing getting frantic which had never happened to me before – I’m usually pretty calm although it had been a while. I came back up and the guide gave me his mask, which didn’t end up working either. I knew I was holding them all up so we decided that I should just swim back to the boat.

I felt pretty embarrassed but I still blame it on the mask. I still had plenty of time to snorkel though my chance to dive in the morning was shot. I was determined to go in the afternoon regardless of what happened – I kept telling myself that I am in the Great Barrier Reef and it was something I HAD to do. I grabbed 3 masks and dove into the water, trying each. I found one that worked and went out to snorkel for about an hour. The rain started again which didn’t make visibility the best. I saw a bunch of fish, a few rays which were really cool, and of course the coral was beautiful. Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures because the underwater disposable cameras on board were $45 and the visibility wasn’t the best. Sorry, people.

We ate lunch and moved the boat a few kilometers away to another dive spot. I got geared up and made it under with no problems this time. It was still raining and the visibility was similar to snorkeling, but being able to go down about 10 meters to see walls of coral and fish everywhere you look. After about 40 minutes my oxygen was running low so I surfaced and came back to the boat. That will go down as one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life. I’m convinced to go back to Cairns in better weather to do it again – it was that good.

On the way back to land I sat with Michelle and Angela (pictured in their stinger suits), two sisters from Chicago that were also staying at Gilligan’s. Michelle is studying south of Sydney and Angela was here for a week to visit. We made plans to meet up that evening at another pub crawl put on by the same guy from Friday and exchanged numbers. There was quite a bit more excitement at the bars since it was a holiday. The organizer ran a few contests with cash and coupon give-aways, one of which was one by Michelle. Let me just say, that girl has guts. I’ll leave it at that.

I connected with quite a few people… Amy is coming through Sydney and promised to hang out. Michelle lives about a half hour outside the city and we will probably see each other again. Mark and Sarah may plan a trip to Sydney and will let me know. Eryca lives in Brisbane and I’m hoping to go out with her if I have time to make it up there. I especially connected with Angela, and in another life would probably try to date her. That is, if she didn’t have a boyfriend and we lived in the same country and/or city. Details, whatev.  It’s not the first time this has happened to me, but it reminds me of the downside of living this way. You meet people you would definitely like to see again (friendly and romantic), but you know you probably won’t. Sadly, I’m getting used to it. On the other hand, I’m living in Sydney, I’m having the time of my life and am doing things I never dreamed of – I can’t complain!