Certified Divers and the END of Oz!!!

Oh Warren!!! We LOVE Warren!!! He's pretty much THE best dive instructor ever and we miss him already!! K time out...we'll backtrack a little here....last stop on the Oz Experience bus and the END of our east coast travelling!! SO sad!! First things first, just before getting into Cairns we made one last adventure stop at Mick's Croc farm - the man believed to have been behind the Crocdile Dundee film. Wouldn't be hard to believe! He has NO problem sitting on the back of a 3m long crocodile! We also saw some emus, cassowaries, kangaroos..got to hold a mini crocodile and SNAKES!! Although LH didn't actually hold one of the pythons, she did very well being around them!!

The arrival in Cairns was quite a big one...tables were reserved at a bar in town called The Woolshed for us Oz finishers. It was kind of sad actually because it was our last night celebrating with Team Canada!! :(

We had a good 7 days in Cairns and we wanted to see Cape Tribulation and take our dive certification course so we were busy girls!! Cape Tribulation itself was gorgeous, but the day trip was really long...I think an overnighter would have been better. We did get to swim in Mossman Gorge (see pic) though and do a rainforest walk. Cape Tribulation Beach was up there for pretty as well:)

Our dive course was senSATIONAL!! We spent 2 days in the classroom and pool in Cairns with Ron, our on-land instructor. We learned about our gear and the skills we had to perform in the pool before writing our exam and heading to the reef! We learned how to take off our masks and put them back on under water..clear the water from them too, take out our breathing regulators, take off our vests and tanks..AND what to do if we run out of air. This included Lauren and I in hysterics at the bottom of the pool trying to both breathe out of my tank and kick up to the surface:)

Now, because we're backpackers and we're cheap, we chose the "budget"option which meant that we didn't stay overnight on the reef and just did 2 day trips. This seemed to be quite the inconvenience because it's really just easier if the class sticks together...so we had to switch instructors for the open water portion. Enter Warren!! With the budget course, you're only supposed to get 4 15 min dives...I don't konw why or how, but we got at least 25 minutes on every dive and it was just the 3 of us every time. We liked him so much we bought him breakfast (brownie points!) and he stuck with us for day 2. The boat ride out to the reef is about 2 hours and it was SUPER wavy which made for murky water and lots of seasick people!! Thank goodness there was an upper deack! It was just our luck that for the only 2 days we were out there the visibility was pretty limited so we di'dn't see any big fish...or sharks :) We did find some nemos, touch some anenome and saw a turtle! Warren also took us through some cool caves and pretty small openings! SOOO we're now certified open water divers!! Yay!! As soon as we save up for the gear we can do some great diving..Mable Lake maybe? Okanagan?

Unfortunately, during dive courses, you get TIRED and we missed out on Halloween :( So we decided to make our own..and did some "creative backpacker costume making". The result was a couple of makeshift gypsy costumes from asian scarces and the accumulation of our silver jewlery....haha...oh the Laurens!!

Off to Sydney for a couple days (laundry time!!!) before we head off to New Zealand for our LAST leg of the trip!! LT gets 20 days south to north and LH gets a month and a bit. So exciting!! Part III: The Laurs in NZ!!

Love and misses,

L and L