Another dream of ours came true today (not that this whole trip isn’t a dream!) and we checked off a very long time bucket list item when we snorkeled on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR)! I can’t even believe I am typing this, much less having experienced it, because I have been dreaming of it for so long. Growing up in FL, Rob and I are both beach types and water fans, and we have been lucky enough to swim and snorkel all over the world… but THIS?! This was a major bucket list item for us. The GBR is the worlds largest coral reef system and stretches 1,400 miles along Australia’s coastline. Today our tour took us to Green Island where we snorkeled the inner area of the northwestern part of the reef and next weekend we head down to the southern part of the reef where we will snorkel again (but with Jenna and her boyfriend Connor joining us)!!😁❤️

We were up early again this morning to head to the marina and catch our tour boat to Green Island, which is about an hour off the coast of Cairns. Lots of tour groups on our boat, and lots of boats on the less-than-one-mile long Green Island dock, which made for some surprising crowds for a Monday! Green Island sits in the Coral Sea and is covered in rainforest, so it’s very scenic. It has one eco resort on it, a boat dock, and a few points of interest, the main one being that is right in the Great Barrier Reef National Park. You can snorkel the GBR right off the beach there, which is super cool, plus they have “the usual” beach tourist stuff like parasailing, glass bottom boats, etc. We took a nice walk around the island in the morning.

We rented snorkel equipment and did a few snorkel swims right off the beach at Green Island that were very nice. In the afternoon, we had an excursion from the dock that took us out a little deeper in the barrier reef, where we got some great views of really large size reef dwellers. Over the past few weeks of travel, we’ve seen many similar things (reef fish, coral, turtles, etc.) to what we saw here when snorkeling, but on the GBR, they were much bigger, likely given the age of the reef.

We loved snorkeling with the turtles, and saw another large black tip reef shark today (about 6 foot), some incredible, tall blue coral, more giant clams, cuttlefish, and a really cool blue sea star. Here are a few of our sights from our underwater camera:

Our snorkel boat has a permit from the GBR conservation people to be allowed to feed the fish off the back of our boat every afternoon, so we got to watch this spectacle today. They have these black giant trevally fish that are super speedy and will leap out of the water to get food. It was so cool!

We had lucked out in our timing of our GBR snorkels. Australia has a serious “stinger season” in the summmer (typically November thru March) where snorkel places require you to wear full-body “stinger suits” when you snorkel to protect you from a certain kind of jellyfish stings. However, the stingers haven’t been seen here just yet, so we were able to swim without them. Yay! When we returned to Cairns, however, it was crazy to see how many jellyfish were hanging out in the harbor! These are “jelly blubber” (no kidding! Isn’t that a great name?!), a type of relatively harmless jellyfish that aggregate in harbors and estuaries around here.

We had dinner on the harbor again before heading back to our condo. I had a “rainbow drink” with dinner- isn’t it pretty?!

It feels amazing to be able to say we crossed off another item on our mutual life goals list today. I am headed to bed feeling very happy and very blessed. Thanks for adventuring with us!