Nudity on the Reef!

I had an amazing, mind-blowingly awesome snorkel on the reef yesterday. Saw lots of beautiful fish and coral and some Loggerhead turtles which I even got to touch! Simply unbelievable. It's amazing how much perspective changes when you're in nature. I even got to try a five minute scuba demo for free and it was cool. I always thought I'd be freaked out doing a dive and while I didn't actually go on a dive, I did spend five whole minutes underwater without coming up. It was surprisingly easy but I don't know if I could handle a half hour dive deep underwater. My horrible ear pressure issues might make it difficult.

Anyway, after the snorkelling was over and we were heading back to the marina, they allowed some people to do what they call boom-netting where you sit in a rope net tied to the back of the boat while it pulls you along. Sounds fun, right? Not so. At first it's going along slowly and it's pretty amusing. Then they start to go a bit faster and this is where the nudity part comes in. I almost lost my bikini! My straps were slipping off my shoulders and I was definitely exposed. But wait, there's more. I felt my bottoms start to slide off and by now the boat was going pretty fast. Water was cascading towards me and it was really hard to hold on to the rope. Not to mention I could hardly breathe and swallowed at least a liter of water. So my bottoms kept slipping further off until they were literally hanging onto my toes. I gripped them so tight which is not easy considering I was thrown off the net. Finally the boat slowed down. Relief? Not so much. Now I had to find a way to put my bottoms on while still holding onto the net and maintaining my modesty all while people on the top deck looked down at me snapping pictures! Unbelievable. Finally I managed to pull them on but they were backwards. So one of the crew gave me a towel to wrap around me and I went up to the deck to change. I asked some girl to hold up the towel while I turned my bikini around, but she didn't really do a good job at that so everybody saw my bare ass once again. Yay for me. Ugh! How humiliating. I spent the rest of the boat ride avoiding eye contact and counting doen the minutes until it was over. Up until then it was a fabulous trip.

So I said goodbye to my travel companion, J, this morning, which was pretty sad because we had a really good time together. He's flying back to Sydney and then home to New Orleans while I headed off to Alice Springs and my Uluru tour. So now I'm in Alice Springs and it's cold! Go figure that today is the second day of rain they've had all year and it's the day I arrive. Ugh, I am not enjoying my bad luck with weather. I've barely seen the sun in a week. And this is the desert...it's supposed to be hot and dry, right? Anyway, tomorrow I leave for my 3 night camping trek in the red center. I really hope my tour is good and the people are cool. Wish me luck in the Outback amongst the snakes and mozzies.