Captain Marc

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We are en route towards the North! The GREAT North. The one bringing tropical cyclones, torrential rains, suffocating heat and hosting salt-water crocodiles and the most deadly jellyfishes on Earth in every water hole having the potential to refresh you. Why are we here, would you say? Darn good question…

While working at the hostel front desk, Stephanie sometimes sold boat tours to people also migrating to the Tropics. In exchange for her services, ABC Company, which manages most of the tours, graciously offered her a free stay on one of its ships. That’s why we faced overflowing rivers and giant ox statues to cross the Tropic of Capricorn and reach Airlie Beach, Whitsundays entryway and Australian capital of tourist exploitation.

So we discovered the Great Barrier Reef on board the Atlantic Clipper (which only cruises the Pacific Ocean)! Two days and two nights on board a 34 m sailboat. A really sublime experience. To our great astonishment, the 74 islands forming the Whitsundays don’t even resemble the tropical oasis we dreamed of. Being a continental archipelago rather than a coralline one, the islands produce vegetation similar to the one on the coast. Very few palm trees but a few conifers. Many times, we had to remind ourselves we were in Australia instead of Quebec, on a lake. The presence of wild dolphins and giant fishes helped to bring us back from our brief mind-wandering.

The heart of the Great Barrier Reef, for one, is absolutely magnificent. Much more than its South end point, where we waddled when we were in Agnes. Here, in the protected section of the Reef, colour prevails. Corals take every shape and present a colour palette rarely seen anywhere else in nature. There are also sea cucumbers, sea stars, sea snakes, sea horses... The Ocean is filled with creatures so strange; Man was forced to create a terrestrial parallel in order to not get lost in it. There is also a dramatic quantity of fishes of all sorts and configurations.

Of course, we saw Nemo; everybody is looking for that one down here. He had eyes much smaller than in the movie though, one less line on his back and he was much more protective of his home. One of them even bit me when I wanted to touch his anemone. Good lesson learned: Don’t touch anything in the Ocean. Except, maybe, Elvis. Elvis is a GIGANTIC maori wrasse, who apparently always wanders in the same spot. He got his name because he’s the « KING » of his strand of reef. He’s 20 years-old, measures about 2 metres, loves to be pet and apparently, recognises boats by the colour of their hull. Substantially, Elvis is a huge sea golden retriever.

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