Once I held his head under the water for a good long while until the screaming and struggling stopped everything got a lot better. Alexander later declared that it was, and I am quoting verbatim here, "the best experience of my life!" To be fair Isabel screamed even more and to be fair they had both been rendered even more irrational and sensitive than normal by hypothermia. I should explain that both were wearing masks and snorkels. I should further explain that both had chosen to sit in the "splash zone" on the catamaran out to the reef. Even in the tropics you can get very cold when you are skinny and wet amd in a strong wind early in the morning. In any case there was a wildly excessive amount of complaining and shrieking about ill-fitting equipment and sand and wind and cold and waves and and and... Until I just shoved their heads under the water. And then there was silence and then they saw how beautiful the coral was. It didn't last long - soon masks filled with water and knees scraped on things and shivering set in again, but while it lasted it was good.
The drama limited our own time available to snorkel, but Lorraine and I agreed that the coral was as good as anywhere we've been, with a diversity of shapes and colours that would be considered tasteless anywhere other than in nature. And we agreed that we were fortunate to get out there early with a smaller group before the monster boats showed up disgorging so many snorkeling tourists that you could walk on their backs from one end of the lagoon to the other (they would probably protest, but if you were quick about it you could definitely manage it).
So that was the Great Barrier Reef. But honestly, what I enjoyed the most was the sail out and back when the children were stunned into silence by the beauty.
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