Finally, the Great Barrier Reef

We took a marvelous boat out to Michaelmas Island in the Middle Reef, and Hastings Reef on the Outer Reef. The boat, Seastar, leaves a full hour and a half before anyone else, so we had the island to ourselves. With only 30 people on board, and 18 of them scuba divers, we had lots of room to snorkel without others around.

The Reef is everything I had ever dreamed. So different from our Caribbean reefs and fish. They have BLUE branch coral! There are so many different kinds of coral, I can't even describe all of them. Green, purple, blue, yellow, pink. Branch, brain, table, mushroom, plate. There are black and white snails that look like yin-yang symbols embedded in the coral.

I saw: a Moray Eel out in the open before it slipped under the vegetation and overhanging shelf. Giant clams, two feet across, with green and pink lips, and purple and blue lips. If you stroke the cilla on the inside of the shell, it "clams" up tight! Watch your fingers! And Batfish, which look like huge angel fish only, unlike the shy Angels, these Bats will come right up to you and "bat" your goggles because they like their reflection! All this on the middle reef.

On the Outer Reef, I saw: a reef shark, shy striped Sweet Lips, 100-pound slant head Parrot Fish that look absolutely prehistoric, a green turtle, and a large Maori Wrasse (Napoleonfish) named Wally (friend of the crew) who had coral embedded in his side. He is blind on his left side, and has lived a hard life. He depends on this ship's crew for food and companionship (apparently) and allowed me to tag a ride on his fin, stroke him, and playfully bumped me on his blind side. Very fun! There are zillions of other fish - small wrasse, damselfish, groupers, etc. Very different colors to what we are used to... lots of white with pale purples and pinks, paler colors in general but then some very bright combinations also. There is a unicorn fish in this ocean that we were introduced to as food on the ship, but we did not see it. It is about a foot long, white, and a horn growing out of its forehead. Yep.

I decided I couldn't do the Reef justice with pictures. You would have liked to see us in our Stinger suits which protect against the jellyfish. Think Teletubbies and you will have an idea.

For those of you who don't know, and those who may have forgotten, part of the reason we took this trip was to celebrate thirty years of a love-filled marriage. We have been so blessed, so lucky, and made some good decisions. We are further blessed by a warm and supportive extended family, as well as the two lights of our life, Julian and Vanessa. I hope everyone will have the chance to do more travelling in their lives.

We are so happy that we were able to take this wonderful trip, see some of the world's amazing places, and check so many things off our "life list".

And, we definitely do not want to go home tomorrow! We want to follow this endless summer forever....