Cairns, Day 4, Green Island (Mar.1)

We walked to the Reef Fleet Terminal, arriving about 8:15 for our 9 AM departure. It was like a busy airport terminal. There must have been well over 20 boats of various shapes and sizes for different cruises operated by different companies.








Our cruise left at 9 and arrived at Green Island, a few miles off the coast, an hour and a quarter later. Green Island is a coral island that has collected enough sand over the millennia to make an island capable of growing plants. It is still surrounded by coral, but is covered in rainforest. It has a dock that serves numerous arrivals and departures during the course of the day.







Our first scheduled activity was a cruise in the semi-submersible at 11:15. By the time we walked to the beach and returned to the dock, there wasn’t a lot of time, but I figured I would get my feet wet, so to speak, with snorkeling. We had landed at an unusually high tide, so there wasn’t much beach. Celeste came in for a quick swim while I snorkeled. This is something I had always told myself I would do and it was everything I had hoped for. The colours of some corals and the fish are very vibrant. And it is remarkable how many fish are gathered in the same place. It is like swimming in an aquarium.


We raced back to the semi-sub for our half hour ride. We saw a sea turtle and many new varieties of fish, mostly larger than the ones I had seen just off the beach because the boat was farther off shore. After this ride, we ate our buffet lunch on the cruise boat and waited for our next activity, the half hour glass bottomed boat ride, at 1:15.






This boat covered much the same area as the semi-sub and we saw much the same fish, but this ride offered the added excitement of a feeding frenzy as they tossed some food over the side.

With our scheduled activities complete, we headed back to the beach for more swimming and snorkeling. When I floated over the coral this time, it was very different. Before, I had floated well above the action. Now, with the tide out the water was 3 to 4 feet lower and I was so close to the coral that I was afraid of bumping into it. And the fish were so close that it seemed you could reach out and touch them. I resisted the temptation, heeding the warnings about toxins and venoms from corals and fish, and the pleas to leave the area pristine.

After snorkeling for a while, I had to come back to the beach before venturing out again. My thighs got tired from the unusual activity of kicking those flippers, but the things that really tired out were my ankles from the unaccustomed flexing.

The cruise left for Cairns at 3:45 and we were back ashore at 5. We walked back to the hotel because I had to do some banking before I had to return the wireless modem before 6, then we went out for a bite to eat and returned to do today’s blog and pictures.

Are there ever a lot of Asian tourists here – Orientals (Japan, China, Korea) and Indians. On our cruise yesterday I am sure the Orientals alone significantly outnumbered the Caucasians. The Indians were in addition to that. We have been noticing this all along, but maybe the attraction of the Reef skewed the numbers more than normal.