Viking World Cruise 2017-2018: February 16, 2018

Queensland’s seaside resort town, Cairns is the gateway to a rich array of natural beauty onshore and off. Catamarans and other ships take marine lovers to the Great Barrier Reef; stretching for 1,400 miles, it is the largest continuous coral reef system on Earth.

Today we had an all-day tour to the Great Barrier Reef. It was wonderful. We walked from the ship to the boat that we were taking our tour on. It is the blue on to the far left.

As we left the marina and harbor area, the shoreline was very pretty, with all the boats that they had. We were heading to Arlington Reef.

Great Barrier Reef is one of the seven natural wonders of the world, and is home to an astonishing array of sea life, including some 1,500 varieties of fish, 360 species of colorful hard corals and one-third of the world’s soft corals. The trip took almost 1.5 hours. When you get there, your ship ties up to what they called a pontoon boat (55 meters long, ours was 32 meters) where you can access the water easily. It looks like a floating platform. The picture was taken as we were leaving.

The first thing we did was to take the glass bottom boat tour, that lasted about 20 minutes.

From there we saw some beautiful coral and sea life. The guide said that most the coral in this area is muted colors.

We then moved on to snorkeling. I am not a snorkeler, so Steve went by himself.

For Christmas, I gave Steve an underwater camera, and he took some great pictures. This is only a small sampling of what he took.

Then we had lunch and went down to what they call the submarine. It is in front of the barge and under water, where they have windows looking outside. There was more to see there, too.

By this time, it is time to get back on to our boat and head back to our ship. It was a long day, but what a great experience. When we got back we walked in to town to buy a post card. Most things were closed as it was close to 6. Here are a few pictures of what we saw.