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The Great Barrier Reef was the reason we had decided to learn to dive, so we could not leave Cairns without doing at least one dive. The problem was there are so many reefs to dive and so many different boats, so it took us a while to decide which to do. We chose to do a live aboard for 4 days and 3 nights on a boat called Taka which was visiting the 'Cod Hole' supposedly one of the best dive sites on the reef. It was well over our budget but it was an opportunity not to be missed. When we were picked up on Tuesday to be taken to the boat it seemed that everyone was a pro, they had their own gear, t-shirts saying 'dived here and dived there' and plenty of dive tattoos. Maybe we would be out of our depth. It turned out graet though as most of the boat had done less than 30 dives and we wern't the least experienced. There were 26 divers on board and 8 crew. Our room was small but the bed was comfy. That evening we spent getting to know the other divers and sorting out the equipment. When we woke on Wednesday morning at 6.30am for breakfast and the 1st dive we were already at the furthest point on our trip 'The Cod Hole'. The 1st dive was just to check to see if we remembered all our training and to give us a brief visit to the reef. Dive 2 took us to the 'Cod Hole' for the feed. We all sat in a circle and the Giant Cod were fed right next to us - close enough for us to touch it was the most amazing experience. We did 1 more dive that day and skipped the night dive. Thursday saw us do our 1st unguided dives, just the 2 of us on our own, it was great to have the freedom to go wherever we wanted. I (Stephen) was slightly worried about getting lost, but the dive site was a circle so we just kept the reef on our right -no worries. We did another 2 unguided dives that day and 1 more on Friday, in total we had completed 8 more dives (we've done 15 now) We saw plenty of unusual fish and 6 or 7 sharks. The food was excellent so we didn't starve. Our only regret was that we didn't take an underwater camera but we were that busy improving our dive skills we wouldn't have taken many good shots - hopefully some of friends we met will e-mail us some good ones. Anyway we are off to the after trip party - not a late one though as we travel to Mission Beach at 9am tomorrow.
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