trip for the next day. He hadn’t got the one we had wanted but they were all pretty much the same apart from the size of boat and our dive was on a smaller boat but that meant less people so we weren’t too bothered! I was more worried about what we were going to find in this new underwater world!

After a good nights sleep we woke up early as our trip was starting around 8.30 a.m. The hostel provided a lift down to the harbour so all’s that was left for us to do was grab a bit of breakfast before we boarded our boat!!! I was really starting to get butterflies about the days proceedings, but Rob kept reassuring me everything would be fine and I wasn’t going to get eaten by any man-eating underwater creature! After we ordered breakfast I realised that I had forgotten my sunglasses - bad move, I hadn’t brought my hat either, so I didn’t really fancy a day on board a boat without either

my wide brimmed hat or shades. So the only left to do was go and buy myself another pair - cool, secretly I’d been after another pair, so this gave me a great opportunity to go and buy some flash shades!!! Rob stayed at the café and off I went. I found a pair and just as I came back to the cafe, the heavens opened and in true tropical weather style the most almighty rainstorm descended onto Cairns - great!!! I got a suddenly feeling that I just wasted $20 on shades as they were definitely not going to be needed. The sky was black, it was raining like there was no tomorrow and the sea was looking less than calm - hmmm!!! We decided to wait until the worst of the rain was over before making our way round to, wait for it, Noah’s Ark our imaginatively named boat!!!

We found the boat and yeap it was quite small, we met the crew, who were, how shall I say it - definitely very loud and boyish.