Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Reef Magic


Unrelated quote of the day: “There [Lance] is – right where he belongs between the boobies and the rap stars.” A charming quote from my lovely boyfriend in reference to where the Lance magazine was located.
So you walk into the Reef terminal and there are a bazillion different providers eager to take you out to the Great Barrier Reef – so how do you differentiate yourself (and the commerce student in me comes out)? But honestly, how do you decide who you are going to pay your $150-$200 for a day out to one of the wonders of the world…I just don’t know. We had a little advice from Keith’s (2nd cousin – not going to get anymore into the relations – as one of the people here mentioned – we’re “prick” relatives) girlfriend Faith who organizes tours for a living – her advice was to go all the way to the Outer Reef…but that doesn’t narrow it down all that much. But this is my take on it:
So the first key is to give out a free voucher for your cruise out to the Reef. Really that makes all the difference in the world – and Reef Magic had us won at that…but then, let’s sweeten the deal. Let’s take you out 500m and have one of the gear boxes fail on the motor – take another 2 hours to get back to the original dock – all the while feeding us fruit and snacks, only to get back and have the impatient and irritating 25% of the clientele get off the boat. At this point, I wasn’t completely convinced that we had made the correct decision (that having been said, we weren’t the honeymooning couple that had had a boat break down on them twice in two weeks) – but then the company moved on and gave us complementary snorkel tours and wetsuits – and I was actually impressed. So we were a behind schedule by a bit – but the day was incredible – so for those of you planning on heading out to the Reef in the near future (which is undoubtedly most of you!) – Reef Magic is the one I reckon.
Once out at the Reef (after I was a little concerned that I was going to lose my lunch on the way out there – apparently I take after me mum) we saw some of the most incredible fish – I really can’t believe the colours! There was one fluorescent striped fish that was my favourite and we saw a Nemo fish – the whole experience has made me want to see Finding Nemo all over again! There was one ginormous fish that was kinda ugly, but cool and we also saw a manta ray – or perhaps a stinger ray – but that made my day!All in all Emma, I dub the Reef festivus fun – it definitely had the potential of falling miserably under New Year’s fun – but it’s a winner – a definitely must do!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

hi jet and chris,

i finally found your blog. hope you're having a blast - kick some tasmanian ass in the carnivals

- swine