Vignette de voyage: Ben

With the hours dwindling to an end for my time in Cairns and indeed my time in Australia as well, I pause to reflect on the past several days. Overall, too much time spent in the underwhelming and fairly tacky tourist town, and too little in the laid-back idyllic Wongaling beach hamlet. Analogously, too little time of my precious year in Australia was spent seeing the invraisemblables wonders this country/continent contains.

It was great to see Ben again and to chill on his vibe for a while. Tropical paradise has a way of chilling people out: slowing them down and gradually extracting the British-ness from them, as the case may be.

gILLIGAN'S

22 July 2010

The abrupt end to the music that was pumping at Gilligan’s night club brought the inevitable shouts for more music infallibly falling on deaf ears. Shortly thereafter, the raucous clamor on the streets below my single-paned sliding-glass door-window transitioned to laughing, joking, flirting voices in the hallways of Gilligan’s adjacent hostel, and an earnest and intimate conversation (whose hilarity merits analysis in the next paragraph) directly outside my room. I subsequently abandoned the notion of sleep for the next few hours while the revelers moved on and quieted down. Unfortunately, I took no pictures of the idiosyncratic Gilligan’s Backpacker during my whole stay.

I re-emerged after being awoken to write in my journal at a table in the filthy kitchen-dining area of the first (second) floor; on the way, I encountered for a third time the earnest couple. The first time, when I left my room for the dance floor at around 9 or 10, they were standing close to each other, not touching but with desire burning like a flare between them. The second time was when I retired to my room for the first time, probably around 1 or 1:30; they had started kissing and I was happy for them as I thought to myself, ‘get a room,’ at which point I didn’t reason that they didn’t have a room, a fact which was all too apparent around 2:30 when I chanced upon them once again—looking much soberer and more frustrated than the two previous times. I dwelt a bit on the irony of my 4-person room (about $6 more expensive per night than the huge dorm rooms that are the norm among backpackers) which I shared with exactly 0 people during my whole 4-night stay, a mere 20 feet from the table over which the couple was growing steadily more frustrated.

For its shortcomings, Cairns played host to the highlight of my trip and one of the true marvels of the Earth. My short day of scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef was an explosion of color, form, and spectacle. Not having an underwater camera, I only have photos of myself above the reef, but check out my blog post for the Great Barrier Reef on Tim Thinks for a description of the marvels to which I bore witness.

Great Barrier Reef

It almost didn’t happen. I hit the snooze button too many times to catch any but the single 10:30 boat trip to the Reef. I decided to spend a lot of money for the “Introductory scuba dive,” and I’m glad that I did! An “Introductory dive” is one for people who aren’t scuba certified but who still want to dive: the diver is accompanied about 90% of the time underwater by a scuba instructor. In this way, one instructor can take three or four scuba greenhorns (as we certainly were) on one breathtaking trip around the small section of reef below the pontoon on the edge of the universe.

The most basic of instruction on the hand signals and use of the complicated and elegant technology had been provided on the boat. After an hour and a half, we arrived at our pontoon floating above a section of the Norman Reef about 50 km away from Cairns. We boarded the pontoon, and I met my instructor, Bata, and geared up for the dive. The two other introductory divers and I practiced the hand signals and certain situations once underwater with Bata (how to take the regulator-mouthpiece out and put it back in, how to get water out of a mask, etc.) before he put our disbelieving hands on three slimy lengths of rope and we descended slowly, clumsily.

The dive lasted only about 45 minutes, but after a few minutes adjusting to my new, magical environs, to the fact that I could actually breathe underwater, and to the slight discomfort in my inner ear, I found that I under my scuba mask and behind my regulator was an enormous smile. I laughed out loud into my regulator. I pointed and put my fingers together to give the ‘all good’ signal. Bata unhooked his elbow from mine and swam out a bit ahead of me with the other two divers. I swam in spirals. I chased after massive schools of colorful minnows that paid me almost no mind until I practically touched them. I put my feet together and kicked my paddles up and down; I was a dolphin! I was rapt.

Above us, the sky was marine blue with a dozen or so small clouds; from the deck, the sea was sky blue and spotted with clumps of turquoise and white. Underwater far exceeds the wildest imaginings; spires and boulders and buttresses and buildings and caves and mountains of interweaving coral, fish of all colors and then some: from the 2” long feeder fish[1] to the giant, friendly Maori wrasses; clams that probably weigh 200 kilos; and the peace and serenity that ruled this kingdom absolutely.

The deepest we dove was about 8 meters, but it sure felt like a completely different universe. How could this all exist a mere 8 meters below sea level? I was captivated and overwhelmed. When I emerged from the ocean to the metal deck slightly underwater below the pontoon and took off my mask and regulator, I could barely contain my excitement. I thanked Bata and the other instructors profusely and asked people to take my picture against the endless and wondrous sea. I began to conceive a plan for returning to the States via Thailand where I would get dive certified.

As I ate a buffet lunch on the boat, I began to return to the pontoon from high on my cloud of reverie. I went back to the aft of the boat where the dive gear was held—a second dive was about 40% cheaper, but I had done enough damage to my bank account for one day. I borrowed a snorkel and mask and returned to the sea. While snorkeling was quite enjoyable and confirmed the reality of the Great Barrier Reef, the scenery was a tiny bit less impressive than it had been earlier. The feeling of the warm water and the sun on my neck and dive suit accompanied me as I chased schools of little fish and watched the fantastic scenery move by below me.

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[1] These 2”-long cleaner fish (cleaner wrasses) are fascinating to watch. They swim around larger fish, in the way remoras often attend sharks, scavenging any morsels that may have been left behind, as well as ‘removing dead skin and ectoparasites.^[1] ’to keep the host fish healthy, Wikipedia reports. Deftly they dance around the eyes and gills of the larger fish; in some instances, they have been seen entering their hosts’ mouths! I looked out for this phenomenon but was not fortunate enough to witness it.