Pro Dive Cairns review

While in Australia my girlfriend and I booked a trip with Pro-dive Cairns to get our open water scuba diving certification. We booked the 5 day PADI learn to dive course online. On the prodivecairns site the price is $750 AUD, but on the prodive.com.au site it is only $730 AUD.  Also when we  were booking the form gave an option to entre a Prodive coupon. I did a quick google search and found the following prodive coupon: Cairnsval9 I entered it and got $50 off each booking (nice savings of $100 total)

We flew into Cairns from Melbourne. Our plan was to stay there for a week while we got our open water certification and then rent a cheap vehicle and drive down to Brisbane to meet with my brother. We stayed at a nice hotel for a good price in Holloways beach and the guys from Pro-dive even came and picked us up!

The five day open water course includes the following:

•  5 full days including 3 Day/2 Night Outer Reef Cruise on the great barrier reef.
• We had many training dives in the pool as well as 4 Openwater training dives plus 5 pleasure dives including 1 fully escorted pleasure night dive all on the great barrier reef

Here is the course timetable to get an idea of how the week went.

Day 1 and 2 are pretty easy you just have to do the exercises in the pool and write the exam. Some of the exercises before using the scuba diving equipment  include treading water for 10 minutes and swimming for 200 yards. Exercises you need to complete underwater include taking your mask off and putting it back on, taking your reg out and putting it back in, and demonstrating some useful scuba diving techniques. The exercises and exam are fairly easy and everyone who was in our class completed them with ease. NOTE: If you have any medical problems such as heart disease, asthma, epilepsy or diabetes you will probably not be allowed to get certified. My girlfriend could not get her scuba diving license because of this but she still came on the boat and snorkelled and had a great time! The picture below is of the prodive pool in Cairns

Image source prodivecairns.com

 This is where you will spend most of day 1 and day 2.  It is great, you learn a lot and they even have a lady bring lunch (which I really liked) On the second day they will bring in all kinds of equipment for you to try out and then give you the chance to buy it. If you just want to dive for the time you are there then you do not really need all the newest equipment, but if you plan on taking diving up as a hobby than I encourage you to buy the gear.

After completing my two days in the class room I was ready to go out to the Great Barrier Reef!

I was so excitted to scuba dive (and a bit nervous) the boat ride out is a bit wavy so if you get sick easily it might be good idea to take some sea sickness pills! On the way out to the reef the staff gives you all of the information you need to know and keeps you entertained as well.

To check out what my dives were like you can follow the links below (I will link them as I write them)

Dive# | Reef we dove at

1. Mill N Reef – Great Barrier Reef – Petat
2. Mill N Reef  – Petat
3. Mill N Reef – The Whale
4. Fynn Reef – “Tennis Courts”

Related posts:

1. Milln Reef – Great Barrier Reef
2. Milln Reef “Petat”
3. Flynn Reef Gordons and Traceys

Tagged as: Australia, Cairns, great barrier reef, pro dive, queensland, Scuba Diving, Travel