Hotels-live.com - TOP 30 @AUSTRALIA BEST MEMORIES ▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂ #22 - Learning to dive on the Great Barrier Reef …………………………………………………… Since I swam with a whale shark on the west coast, I knew one day I’d learn to dive and get my PADI licence. I arr

Hotels-live.com - TOP 30 @AUSTRALIA BEST MEMORIES ▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂ #22 - Learning to dive on the Great Barrier Reef …………………………………………………… Since I swam with a whale shark on the west coast, I knew one day I’d learn to dive and get my PADI licence. I arrived in Cairns early August and I had 2 weeks to discover the region, so I contacted @prodivecairns and decided to do a 5 day PADI Open Water course. That was the perfect occasion to do it ! I spent 2 days in the training center and 3 days on a boat, learning to dive. After 5 dives I started to feel really comfortable underwater. It wasn’t a foregone as I’ve never really enjoyed being in deep water and I had some troubles with equalizing my ears at the beginning. But thanks to Greg, my fantastic PADI instructor, I gained confidence and gradually I felt like a fish in water. I litteraly discovered a new passion. Diving is something completely different from everything else I did in my life and I absolutely recommend it to anyone keen to experience something truly new and exciting. So after I got my Open Water certificate, I decided to go Advanced, to be allowed to dive to 30m. I also completed the underwater photographer skill which is the first step to be a professional underwater photographer. Now I think I can say I’m quite comfortable with diving even though I only have 10 dives in my logbook. The sure think is now I just wanna dive the world. After my 9 dives on the Great Barrier Reef in Cairns, including the night one which was much more intense than the other ones, I dove in the Whitsundays. I wanted to dive Yongala wreck near Townsville, Lady Elliot Island for the manta rays, and South West Rocks in NSW for the grey sharks, but unfortunately I didn’t have the time/chance to do it. Definitely a good excuse to come back to Australia someday :) In the meantime, I hope I’ll get the opportunity to get some good underwater photography gear and learn the art of photographing the underwater world. I heard New Zealand has some good spots, including the Poor Knights Islands Marine Reserve off New Zealand’s Bay of Islands, one of the world’s top five diving locations according to Jacques Cousteau ! Hopefully I’ll dive there ! @Hotelslive by lebackpacker instagram.com/p/tPr5b8BQZw/ Follow #Instagram @Hotelspaschers instagram.com/hotelspaschers and @Voyageslive #Twitter #TeamFollowBack #Lebackpacker #Voyage #Travel #TFB #FollowTrick www.facebook.com/125048940862168/photos/a.801854003181655... via Hotels-live.com www.facebook.com/pages/p/125048940862168 #Retweet #TeamFollowBack #F4F #TityFollowTrain via http://flic.kr/p/pkJJqw