While in Kuranda we went to the Butterfly Sanctuary, formerly the largest one of its kind in the world, until a larger one was built in England. Since Pete was at his scuba diving refresher class, I decided to take a few butterfly photos in hopes of both impressing and informing him. Here was my favorite picture:
The butterflies are attracted to bright colors, but they particularly like white. Morgan was wearing her Yankees hat in support of her team during the playoffs, and the butterflies seemed to enjoy the white embroidery of the logo.
Our main reason for staying in Cairns was so that we could take an overnight boat trip to the Great Barrier Reef. We booked the trip at our hostel—Morgan decided to go snorkeling, I signed up for introductory scuba diving, and Pete, who is a certified diver, signed up to do some dives as well. The weather was perfect—80s, sunny, calm water, amazing visibility, and not much wind. At our last dive location on the second day, you could clearly see portions of the coral reef from the deck of our ship. These were the actual colors—this photo wasn’t altered.
On my first attempt at diving, I couldn’t seem to equalize the pressure in my ears, and after 20 minutes we all came up for air. After that I stuck to snorkeling with Morgan in hopes that my ear would heal. My ear never equalized, but it wasn’t so bad since snorkeling was better—I could maneuver into smaller spaces and float above coral that was just a few feet below the surface.
I’ll let Pete post his underwater photos, but the highlights included a large turtle, electric-blue coral, white-tipped reef sharks, and giant clams. There were more colors and more species than I’ve ever seen in such a small area. It was definitely one of the coolest things I’ve ever done.
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