There is no better place then get an introductory dive right in the middle of the ocean and, even better, among one of the living wonder of the marine world, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

You might think it requires a lot of preparations, me too, but actually not at all. This can be easily (??) done on a-day snorkelling trip out to the reef from Cairns and that’s exactly what we signed up for.

Escorted on each side of the instructor, as he deflated our devices we started descending into the deep blue water. I felt disorientated, my sight was unclear and my senses of perspective seemed vanishing.The adrenalin was pumping madly through my body, my heart beating hard and my breath was heavy and fast. I was nervously acting exactly the way we were told not to.

I tried to calm down but I couldn’t help myself noticing we were already 3/4 meter below the water surface and hell lots of water were below my feet when my mask started misting. I got the attention of the trainer which started gesticulating oddly. Probably he should had instructed us a bit more on the earlier lesson since, after few misinterpreted signs, I found myself lifting my mask ...ups, all the water was now coming right into my face and nose.

At that point, the instructor had to slowly take me back to the surface. I could see clearly on his face his disappointment and probably want to shout at me “what the hell did you do that for” but, seriously, I didn’t understand a thing what he wanted me to do down there and my only concern was not to drink more water than what I already had. Women like attention, right? But not when you emerge in the middle of the ocean with all the eyes of the boat’s crew staring at you. He then asked me that obvious (to him) question if I wanted to go back onboard but, call my mad, I wanted to carry on with the dive; I hardly started to explore this new world and was already hooked up. Hence, after a good damn spit to the mask and few shrewdness from the instructor, we were back deep into the water. We probably went down to 6-8 meters and swam towards the swallow water of the reef. As Chris and I marvelled at all the creatures passing by and the one the instructor would pointed out while trying to hide among the corals, I simple forget about my fears. We admired “Nemo” playing around in its anemone and a monster 1,5mt clam to which he insisted we stuck our hands inside, I excluded the mussel fancy it since it kept snappily shut as we touched it.

It felt pretty surreal to be deep in this wonderful world that time seemed to me to stop. Sadly, our 30minutes dive was over.

Nevertheless, we had 4 more hours of amazement on our own, drifting over the dramatic coral formations and hundreds of enchanting colourful marine life: big schools of colourful little reef fishes, parrotfishes, playful angelfishes, sea stars, multi-coloured Christmas tree worms popping out from the corals, barracudas running after their catches, a huge green turtle, clown fishes, an impressive maori wrasse, batfishes are only few to be listed among the many reef dwelling creatures we came across while snorkelling in these coral gardens.

I had to confess that, despite we saw many more fishes while snorkelling over the Great Barrier Reef and my initial fiasco, diving was all together a complete different experience that opened up my eyes into this enchanting world and made me rise just one question: when would I make it back to Thailand for that scuba diving course?? I am craving for more!