SCUBA diving on the reef

Number of hours of continuous sleep: 2

Today is SCUBA diving day. Our 3-dive tour is scheduled to pick us up at 7:30AM. Getting up wasn’t too hard, because I’m used to being up at 8am for my early class for the past few weeks. Like I mentioned in the last post, drunk people kept waking me up last night, so I was a little tired. Hopefully, I can sleep on the boat a bit.

We arrive at the marina, which is loaded with very expensive boats that I should own one day. Our coach for the day turns out to be a 25 meter (82 feet) catamaran that appears to be fairly new. These guys are cut out for the high seas, thank goodness. A friendly crew greets us, about 15 or so young divers and ship mates. After a humorous debriefing by who appears to be the head SCUBA guy (bug the captain, don’t piss off the chef, etc), we lounge around for another half hour until we get to the reef.

The boat itself is a two-story twin turbo-diesel catamaran which moves quite quickly, about 30-35 knots from what I can tell. The lower deck is specially designed for diving and contains a recharge station for about 40 diving tanks and a special deck that lowers to water level to help a diver loaded with 50 lbs of gear to get out of the water relatively easily.

Our first dive was scheduled for 10AM. We were split into groups of four with an instructor/guide per group. Since noone in our group was certified, there was a brief lesson and limits as to what we could do in the water (“Do NOT push this button!”). Fortunately, our guide has a good sense of humor and liked to have a good time.

By this point on the trip, I now know my wetsuit size after wearing them 4 previous times. This is strange. We get geared up with a wetsuit (which we turned out to not really need because the water was warm), flippers, goggles, a weight belt, and of course, an air tank. I had forgotten the secret to getting goggles not to fog but was quickly reminded – hawk up a nice loogie and rub it around on your goggles before putting them on. Brilliant!

We hop in the water and we practice a few important SCUBA maneuvers, like recovering you regulator and getting water out of your face mask. After we get our basics down, our instructor does her trademark happy dance and we go for a swim. On one of the tanks we were using, you can last for about 20-30 minutes under water before having to surface. They were pumped up to about 3100 PSI. Lotta air in a little space.

This was my first time diving, and it was an incredible experience. Being under water for more than a minute is fascinating. You can’t hear anything, it’s like you’re in a dream world. Once I got the hang of only breathing through my mouth, it was natural and I almost forgot about my SCUBA gear. I was initially scared that my ears wouldn’t be able to handle the pressure, but once I mastered equalizing the pressure, it didn’t bother me at all. The ecosystems on the Australian Great Barrier Reef are nothing short of amazing.

Floating around down there is like visiting another planet in another dimension where you’re weightless and hearing isn’t a sense. The colors were absolutely amazing, and the pictures don’t often do justice to what we saw. Right away we saw some of the millions of corals, anemones, and other animals and plants that made up the reef. The size, shapes, and colors were like nothing seen on land. The variety of fish was nothing short of amazing, either. Between gigantic schools of little tiny fish to beasts the size of us, there was everything imaginable just in the small area that we were in.

Our instructor led us to a sandy spot and we found a sea slug the size of a football that you could toss around. She explained the creature’s anatomy to us by referencing her own—pointing to the slug’s mouth and then her mouth, the slug’s butt then her butt, etc. Laughing underwater can get you in trouble, so I had to resist.

We swam along, and basically went on the Finding Nemo tour. We saw a clownfish in its respective sea anemone Of course, we took a bunch of pictures. I was in a tough position seeing as I have a very itchy trigger finger and only had 27 exposures at my disposal. So, I was a little more judicious with the photos on this dive, and with 3 dives in all, that makes for 60 pictures… We’ll find out soon if they came out.

After 20-30 minutes of quality diving, our guide ushers us back – Clark managed to run low on air first and thus earned the title “Air Slut” well before any of us were getting close to the critical 50 bar (500-1000 PSI) range. Maybe he just had big lungs…

Surfacing was painless. You don’t have to clear your ears as you go up; the air just seeps out of them. We swam back to boat, climbed in, toweled off, and prepared for our next dive. I reloaded my underwater camera and prayed for it not to leak anymore.

The other two dives were more of the same, except we had more freedom since we didn’t have to go through a training session again. My camera seemed to leaking a little bit, but I hope the pictures still turned out (film is pretty tolerant of water). For some reason, I felt like I was a little too counterweighted and had problems sinking a little too much, so when my instructor wasn’t looking I put some more air in my vest (which they told us not to do). Oh well, it helped me out. Apparently, if you put too much air in your vest and you start rising, it expands and you rise faster and the next thing you know you’re on the surface with the bends and busted eardrums.

The trip back was uneventful and consisted of a combination of reading and sleeping. I managed to hop off the boat and leave my hat on, of course I don’t realize this until after I returned to the hostel.

From what I hear, 8 people a year die diving in Australia. Fortunately, no one on our trip became a statistic.

We call it an early night after eating a delicious AU$7 buffet (all-you-can-eat, hell yeah) at the hostel. We have to be up early for a 6:30AM depature on our deep sea fishing trip!

Cheers,
--P

Off to Cairns!

Happy St. Patty’s day!

So I woke up this morning, did the class thing, and did my final errands before heading to the airport. While wandering around, buying film, and getting my daily Kebab (I’ve lost count now), I try taking a picture of a street artist only to find that I have indeed broken my digital camera.

A moment of silence for my fallen camera.

I compensate by buying more film for my underwater camera. With a week left, it should hold out. I did some math, and after 6800 pictures, and factoring the cost of the camera at $300, that’s $.05 a picture. I’m doing pretty well.

So anyway, the gameplan is to go to Cairns, get a little scuba diving in, some fishing, and possibly tool around on some ATVs to wrap up the weekend. With a majority of the people from our trip going on this little side trip, it should be pretty interesting.

Now, you might be asking yourself, “how do you pronounce ‘Cairns’”? I still ask that question. The Aussies say “Cans”, which would give the word not one but two silent letters. Aussies have a funny habit of moving around ‘r’s, adding them to some words and removing them from others. The most blatant example of this is when a Aussie says “No”. It comes out as “Nor!”, especially when they get agitated. Other examples:
• English: “Hello” – Aussie: “Hellor”
• “Melbourne” – “Melbon”

I get my stuff packed up, and head to the airport by myself. Since I buggered up my ticket that was booked with everyone else originally, I booked a different one through the local budget airline, JetStar. Brisbane has a train, akin to MARTA, that runs to the airport every few minutes. It’s pretty expensive - $11 a trip, but is cheaper than a cab I suppose.

Because I’m used to catching flights out of Atlanta, I get to the airport way too early. After getting through security (and having my umbrella examined and my pocket screwdriver confiscated), I kill some time by eating some shitty Aussie pizza (I have yet to find good pizza or hamburgers in this hemisphere) and devouring a Dan Brown novel.

A word about Jetstar airlines. This is by far the most cheaply run airline I’ve ever seen. They only fly low-end Boeing or Airbus planes. There are no assigned seats. Boarding is done by first-come-first serve. The gate doesn’t have a jetway—you have to walk on the tarmac to get into the plane. I was surprised that the pilot wasn’t outside throwing baggage onto the plane.

On board the plane, every seemed more or less like a normal airplane, except the stewardesses were charging for everything, even soft drinks! Disappointed (but not mad, you can’t ask much when you fly the Greyhound of the skies), I passed out and slept for most of the flight.

To Jetstar’s credit, however, they did have the most gorgeous stewardresses I’ve ever seen on an airplane.

The hostel that we picked out was nice enough to pick us up from the airport. After some confusion from 30 of us checking in at once, we get settled in and try to sleep for the night. Seeing as it was St. Patricks day, this proved to be more difficult than anticipated. Normally, I would have participated in the festivities, but after being up since 7AM and having our scuba trip departing early the following morning, I didn’t want to go out.

Being it was a hostel, I got put in a room with 5 other random people, who randomly turned out to be extremely drunk most of the night and coming in and out of the room at all hours of the night. They were never in there long enough for me to wake up to yell at them, but they sucked at life. At least the room has air conditioning – Cairns is quite humid and warm.

Long day tomorrow.

--P

The Prodigy, Live in Brisbane!

TOUR SOME MORE: Our first of many architecture tours was today. We’re starting to feel the routine of it – but it’s still interesting. Brisbane, like every other Australian city, is a port city. It’s built inland on a river that is quite curvy. This makes the city hard to navigate if you try to reference your position by the river.

Unlike other Australian cities, timber is abundant here and thus most of the residential houses are built of wood unlike the common sandstone structures in Sydney. To avoid having to level land, most of the houses are on stilts too, much like you would see in a town on the east coast that regularly dodges hurricanes.

We do get to see a neat art museum. One piece that stands out is a sculpture that reminds people where the high water line is for floods – it’s the word “Flood” but it’s built to look like the cement is coming up over the sculpture. Of course, we climb on it and take pictures being the mature adults we are.

Josh and I get yelled out for talking on the bus while the professor is trying to lecture. Oh well.

When we get back from the tour, I take a nap, eat dinner, then go looking for someone to accompany me to the Prodigy concert that night. Tyler finally agrees to tag along, being a fan of the music.

PRODIGY!! The venue is called “The Arena Complex”, which to me sounded like a nice big place where there will be a huge crowd. Should be nice, I figured. When we arrive at the place, I was quite surprised to learn that the Arena was in fact, not an Arena by any stretch o the word, but a large bar capable of holding about 1500 people. For this kind of concert, this would be extremely cool.

Unfortunately for us, the show was sold out, so we came prepared with Aussie Bucks to look for some scalped tickets. After a few minutes of nagging people as they went by, two large, intimidating, drunk, jolly guys offer a ticket to us. After some brief haggling, I couldn’t get the guy under $100AU, so finally accepted his ticket. He promises to buy me a drink inside too, which was nice of him.

Now, it was time to get Tyler a ticket. We ask around for tickets for another 10 minutes, when someone finally directs us to a fellow standing down the street wearing a bookbag. We approach the guy, who was looking conspicuously nonchalant. I was instantly creeped out by this guy, because he talked in a low, monotone voice, made excessive eye contact, and made unnecessarily long pauses in the conversation. We finally get a ticket out of the guy, and we were set to go in.

The inside of the place was relatively tiny. The dancefloor was approximately 30 feet square, and an upper balcony ran around the room. The total floor area of the place wasn’t much larger than that of a basketball court. Now, imagine a sound system that stretched to the ceiling. By my educated estimates, it was at least a 50,000-watt system. Adam Freeland was the opening DJ, of whom I’m a big fan. This guy was real good, and he got the crowd going with some of his tunes. He randomly mixed in “Song 2” by Blur, which really got people excited. After he got us good and sweaty, he finished his set, and the stage hands clambored on stage to revel the Prodigy set behind the curtain.

First off, I wasn’t expecting much more than a pair of turntables and couple of MC’s jumping around yelling at us. I couldn’t be more wrong. As the curtain dropped away, I was stunned to see an entire setup more complicated than most rock bands. An elaborate drum set, two guitars, a bass, and some mic stands surround a futuristic console of 5 keyboards, 2 computers, and a bevy of miscellaneous equipment.

Apparently, you can play electronic music completely live. I did not know this.

A minute-long build up intro played to get every into the mood, and the band marched out on stage. The band itself dressed in usually wacky-musician with crazy hair attire.

But first, a word about Prodigy’s music. It is the definition of pure hard energy. A typical Prodigy song is like a workout—it warms you up, slams you into a constant frenzy, holds you there ‘till you’re exhausted, gives you a little break, then lays it on again. Liam Howlett, the man behind the music, manages to pull this off nearly every song without using the same song over again is beyond me.

So, knowing this, my expectations were quite high by this point after seeing the set. I wasn’t disappointed. As the first song rose to its crescendo and slammed into it’s full energy, it hit me like a freight train and I couldn’t do anything but dance. The sound was deafening but crystal at the same time, and the lights were blinding and in perfect sync to the music. The total package made the entire room explode into dancing/jumping/whatever you have it and was amazing. And this was the opening song.

Prodigy has high expectations of its fans, and we had to work hard to keep up with them. I was completely soaked by the fourth song, and exhausted by the time they wrapped up the set. They played songs off their new CD, as well as their classics – Firestarter, Breathe, Smack my Bitch Up, and more. At the end, I couldn’t handle anymore as I was exhausted, dehydrated, soaked, and every last bit of euphoria in me spent into the air. It had been only an hour and half. What a rush.

Simply put, this was and probably will be the best concert I have ever been to. It’s unfortunate this group doesn’t have plans to currently tour the states, but if you ever have the opportunity to see these guys live, don’t pass it up no matter how much it costs.

Afterwards, we mustered up some energy, got cleaned up, and went out for a bit. Nothing much came of that, but it was fun still.

Sorry I’m posting this out of order, but I had to get it down before I forgot it. The older entries are still coming, promise!

--P