By Lawrence Casiraya
INQUIRER.net

ON A TRIP to Cairns over the weekend, Systimax treated us journalists to a trip to the Great Barrier Reef. To an avid scuba diver, this sure sounds like heaven. I’m not a certified diver, but once we were told we could do some snorkeling… man, this is the Great Barrier Reef!

To get close to the reef, we hopped on a boat from that would take us to Green Island. You could tell from the above picture it was early morning, people sipping coffee to go with some excellent hot muffins. Two hours on a boat sounds like fun, but not totally for seasick chumps like me.

Green Island itself is a commercial resort. Now I know why there were flights from Osaka straight to Cairns: Japanese are to Australia as Koreans are to the Philippines. At the information counter, there’s even a Japanese fellow to entertain tourists.

The beach at Green Island isn’t bad at all. Mary, a journalist from Sydney (and at the age of 60, an avid triathlete) warned, though, that Queensland could be hotter than most tropical countries like the Philippines. After taking this shot, I took off for snorkeling in the middle of the Coral Sea.

The Great Barrier Reef contains the most number of marine species per square meter. For those who don’t feel like getting wet, the glass-bottom boat is the next best thing to snorkeling. It’s like being in 360-degree aquarium.

Remember Dory from “Finding Nemo”? I can’t recall what kind of fish she is, though. Anyway, fish are best seen moving so here’s a video I took during the tour.