So as most of you may know, I have this thing against Finding Nemo. Don’t ask me why, but for some reason I just couldn’t like that movie. Well, for all of you who were shocked to hear that when you first found out, you will be glad to know that I may be rethinking my position on the movie after diving in the Great Barrier Reef. I was on the reef from Friday to Saturday and stayed overnight on a Liveaboard boat. We did a total of 7 dives and I haven’t been more tired in awhile. By the seventh dive I finally found Nemo and was pretty excited. On top of Nemo, I found essentially every other fish in the movie, including the sharks. The way the trip went was that we did 3 dives on Friday, 1 dive Friday night, and 3 dives on Saturday. Well as you may have guessed, the sharks were a fan of the night dive. We got in the water around 7:30pm and were each given a flashlight (but for some reason Scuba divers like to call them torches). Because this was may first night dive I had to go with a guide, so 4 of us grouped together and went down with a guide. Night diving is one of the coolest things, if you’re claustrophobic, you probably wouldn’t care for it. All you can see in the water is darkness and beams of lights moving around from all the torches. You have to scuba a bit to actually get to the reef so for the first part you are just swimming in darkness with no idea what is around you. We then got to the reef and saw all of the fish and turtles sleeping. The turtles kind of just glide around and you have to be careful not to shine the light in their eyes or you will wake them up. Our guide then took us to a section to show us luminescent material, we kind of saw it but we didn’t know what we were looking for so instead we all sat on the ocean floor starring at our guide trying to figure out what he was saying. We then came back to the boat and stopped at one of the mooring lines. Tied to the mooring line was an oil drum. The four of us held on to the mooring line as instructed as our guide swam down to the drum. According to our guide, there’s no better way to attract sharks than to beat on an oil drum. So there we were, hanging in darkness with a few little flashlights and being shaken about by huge vibrations echoing through the water. For the next few minutes, we saw brief glimpses of gray bodies moving by us, I couldn’t quite make out the sharks but from what I heard when I got on the boat, there were quite a few circling us. So yeah, it was pretty awesome. After that dive we were quite exhausted but it was all well worth it. We then ended the trip with an awesome last dive. As I was swimming back to the boat, I looked up and noticed that everyone on the boat was pointing and looking off in to the distance. As I turned around, I saw a humpback whale surface about 100 feet out in the ocean. The crew tried to get the whale to come by our way but it stuck to it’s path and swam off, but nonetheless, I can legitimately say that I saw a humpback whale as I was scuba diving. What a way to end the trip.

However the excitement doesn’t end there. For the last day of our stay here in Australia, our group organized a party at AJ Hackett’s Bungee Jumping. The facility is hidden back in the rainforest and has both bungee jumping and the large swings that you find in amusment parks. Since it was our last day in Australia, I decided that I had to go out doing one more awesome thing. We started off the swing to warm up and prepare for the bungee jump, which was a great idea until we realized exactly how high we were about to jump from. The bungee tower is about 160 feet high, which isn’t bad in comparison to sky diving however for this, you have to make the decision to jump and you come about a foot from hitting the water. A little bit more scary. Yet this didn’t stop me from jumping, and although I was nearly peeing my pants, I made the jump. It was one of the coolest feelings, and just like skydiving, is a little hard to describe. The thought of looking off the edge of something really high and then jumping pretty much sums it up. What made the jump even better was that we were doing it at night, so when you looked straight ahead, you looked out over the city of Cairns and you could see all the stars above us. To make it better, we were jumping on a full moon. What a way to end my summer, I don’t think I’ve ever done so many crazy things in such few days. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

But now it’s time to head home and I am itching to touch ground in Philly. This summer has been incredible and I am so grateful for everything that I have been able to see, learn, experience, and take back with me. I’m still processing some things and realizing how lucky I have been. It’s amazing how fast 10 weeks can go by. Now it’s time to start back up in PA, hopefully I can apply many of the things that I learned and hopefully I never forget the friendships and memories that I have made here. Between my journal, this blog, and letters that I have written, I have a feeling I should be able to remember it pretty well. If there’s one thing I took from all of this, it was the importance of just writing and keeping track of your thoughts. By actually writing down some of the things I was doing and seeing, I realized just how incredible this summer has been. The fact that I have circled the globe is cool in itself. I can’t wait to see everyone back home (especially my dogs) and hope to talk to everyone really soon. For one last final good bye from Australia, g’day mates!