First Day at the Reef!

Since the major attraction here is the Great Barrier Reef, we booked two tours on separate days, with different companies, to see as much of the reef as we could. Today was our first day out! We were really relieved to see that the day was really beautiful. We went first to Michaelmas Cay and then to the Hastings Reef. John even got to do an introductory dive, (Marian is a little scared to try.) Needless to say, the Barrier Reef is incredible. Its like putting your head underwater and seeing a different planet. So many beautiful colorful fish and coral. We felt quite spoiled. At Hastings Reef John was following a fish over some coral and ran into a reef shark! Well, not really. He saw it in the distance, and reef sharks have never killed anyone. He did get a little freaked and quickly swam back to the group though. Later he was able to get a shot of the shark in the distance. Here are a few favorite pictures from the first day.


















Can you find the shark???


Here is the first reef we went to, Michaelmas Cay. It was an inner reef and had a little bird sanctuary on it:


At the end of the day we saw cockatoos flying around! Crazy. Here is the clearest pic we got of them...



But here is what they actually look like.