{"id":3415,"date":"2019-09-13T07:23:52","date_gmt":"2019-09-13T11:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/?p=3415"},"modified":"2019-09-13T07:32:10","modified_gmt":"2019-09-13T11:32:10","slug":"the-great-barrier-reef","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/relativerest.com\/?p=3415","title":{"rendered":"The Great Barrier Reef"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday September 12, 2019<\/h3>\n

I had planned two different ways of seeing the Great barrier Reef<\/em> (GBR) today. The preferred option, for good weather, was to fly to the reef on a seaplane. I have never done a water takeoff or landing so that would have been a new experience and it would save me 80 km\/50 mi of driving as well as five hours of travel time to the reef and back. Well, that didn’t happen. All week the winds were too high for the seaplane to land and dock with the reef pontoon so I had to resort to booking a cruise to the reef from Airlie Beach.<\/p>\n

This did not affect the reef experience which would have been much the same either way and was very enjoyable. I visited Hardy Reef<\/em>, about 60 miles from Airlie Beach, where the boat docks alongside a large pontoon that is permanently moored there.\"Barrier<\/p>\n

There are several ways to view the reef from the pontoon and I’ll go through them in the order I did them.<\/p>\n

Helicopter:<\/strong> This replaced the seaplane views. We were taken from the pontoon to a floating helicopter pad using a small platform with an outboard motor. You can see how windy it was from the water.\"Barrier
\nThe helicopter flight was short but offered great views of the reef.<\/p>\n

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