At 04:30 a.m. we stood in front of our accommodation with packed suitcases and were taken by bus to Tahiti’s airport. From there we took a flight to Auckland (New Zealand). We had to stay there for a few hours and took the opportunity to have lunch together in town, where we also met a long-term JBL partner.
In the early afternoon we were back on a plane heading for Brisbane (Australia) and after a short stopover on a domestic flight to Cairns. The fact that we’d been in the water every day made the luggage inspections a real challenge. Our clothes had never really dried, and our suitcase weight had gone up by up to 30 %. As a group we managed to ”smuggle” the excess weight in our hand luggage, and so far it’s worked.
After we had been on the plane for about 22 hours, we took a bus for another hour to Port Douglas where all the expedition participants fell exhausted into their beds. Wait – of course all our cameras needed to be checked and the batteries charged beforehand. Thanks to WLAN we were all able to read messages from friends and families at home on our mobiles. I’m sure we’ll sleep well in anticipation of tomorrow, because the Great Barrier Reef is on the agenda.
