As soon as we settled on Cairns as our second Australian stop, we knew we had to get out and see the Great Barrier Reef. It’s the largest living thing on Earth, one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, and can even be seen from space!

In Cairns, there is no shortage of tours taking you out to the Reef, but there are only so many people allowed to visit daily, so it’s important to book ahead of time. It can be pricy, but remember you get what you pay for, especially in this case. We took an 8 hour snorkeling tour with Seastar Cruises, and it was really special. (Aside from the fact that I spent the entire time on the boat battling seasickness and the resulting dehydration, but ya know.)

We visited two different parts of the Reef, one was fairly shallow and was right off of a little island that only birds are allowed on. The other was deeper, with much darker blue water and very, very large clamshells. The guides from Seastar said that if we were going to see any reef sharks, this was the place. Jeremy was totally excited about this concept, but sadly we didn’t see any sharks. That would have made for a really cool story though!

The water was cold, but we had wetsuits (is there anything less flattering on a woman’s body than a wetsuit? ugh.) and flippers to keep warm. We saw so many different types of coral, clams, all colors shapes and sizes of fish, and even turtles! Overall, it was an incredible experience and one I’ll remember for the rest of my life.