Great Barrier Reef

Our first stop was Heron Island, a coral island on the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef.

We stayed at the Heron Island Resort. They kept us well fed with fabulous buffets for breakfast and lunch, and always a sumptuous dinner. If it weren't for the strenuous exercise of walking to and from the dive boats or hauling ourselves into bed for the afternoon siesta, no doubt some of us would have gotten fat!

We logged 11 dives total. There was usually one dive in the morning and one in the afternoon. The water was a chilly 72 degrees F (chilly for us tropical divers), which kept us from doing double dives in the morning. The Great Barrier Reef was beautiful - every bit as impressive as the better dive sites in the Caribbean such as Cozumel or Grand Cayman. There was quite a bit more hard coral here than the Atlantic dive sites I've been to, but the quantity and variety of fish was similar to Florida or the Caribbean.

Some of the more interesting sights we were treated to included a sea snake, an enormous manta ray on the night dive, numerous white-tip sharks up to 8', many sea turtles, dolphins, and finally: actual, real, genuine clown fish hiding in sea anemones.

Here was our island home for the week:

Jim braves the highly venomous Sea Cucumber:

Nicolo and Heather enjoying the water:

Another beautiful day in paradise!

This was the view from our room on Heron.