Second Day at the Reef: The Opal Reef

To our delight, we woke up at 7:00 today for our second trip to the Great Barrier Reef. This tour headed to the Opal Reef from Port Douglas. We were not as lucky with the weather this time around:



Once the tour was at the reef John waited to go on his introductory dive and Marian met a friend who took her to see a “Bombing” (a coral canyon given its name due to the sound of a boat hitting the coral). To John’s disappointment the guides did not let him take a camera on the first dive for safety reasons…or to me an obvious marketing ploy to encourage a second dive. But we snorkeled together for a little while after John’s dive and got some good picture including a GINANORMOUS Maori Wrasse that John chased:



Here our some other highlights from the first snorkeling experience:




We then had our lunch and reef talk as the boat headed to what we believed to be another part of the Opal Reef. John fell for the marketing ploy and went for a second dive. The highlight was a stingray:



Here are some other fun pictures from that dive:




After the dive we snorkeled a while together and saw some cool reefs.











Overall it was a fun trip even though the windy conditions did not produce the clearest water we had been in.

We were then dropped off at the hotel and met Bozo the hotel cockatoo for a picture.



We cleaned up and headed into town for our favorite meal…THAI FOOD!! We met some nice Kiwis that we chatted with and exchanged photographer skills.