Hilarious comments from clueless tourists

A Great Barrier Reef tour guide has shared some of the most amusing comments and questions tourists have made while visiting.

A tour guide has opened up about some of the most amusing things tourists have said to her while visiting the Great Barrier Reef.

Brooke works for Ocean Safari, an eco certified company that has a five star rating on TripAdvisor.

It operates out of Cape Tribulation, a stunning part of the world where the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef (both UNESCO World Heritage Sites) meet.

Twice a day, Ocean Safari collects guests at Cape Tribulation beach (about a three-hour drive from Cairns) and takes them snorkelling on the reef.

Brooke has met thousands of tourists from all around the world, some of whom have made some rather … interesting … comments while visiting the reef.

She told news.com.au that one person asked her, “Why does the water taste so salty?”, to which Brooke replied, “well, it’s the ocean”.

Tour guide Brooke Nikora.

Snorkellers enjoying the reef. Picture: Ocean Safari

While they were travelling to the reef on the Ocean Safari vessel, a tourist once asked Brooke, “how far above sea level are we?”

“I once had a guest trying to bottle the blue ocean water, and they couldn’t work out why it wasn’t blue in their bottle,” Brooke told news.com.au.

The tour guide has also heard her fair share of odd complaints.

One tourist remarked, “ugh, snorkelling makes me so wet,” while another was less impressed with the weather conditions in the nearby Daintree rainforest, saying, “it’s so rainy in the rainforest!”

Brooke revealed that tourists are sometimes a little confused about Australia’s geography, particularly the Cape Tribulation area.

While boarding the Ocean Safari vessel on Cape Tribulation beach, one tourist asked Brooke where the Daintree Rainforest was, unaware that they had been driving through it for the last hour.

Snorkelling on the reef with Ocean Safari is a must do if you’re in Tropical North QLD.

Another person was under the impression that Cape Tribulation was an island, asking her, “so, how big is the whole island?”

Brooke’s tongue-in-cheek reply was, “it’s pretty big, so big in fact it’s known as Australia!”

Slow start to the year

Ocean Safari was one of the many businesses affected by landslides in December, which blocked the only road in and out of Cape Tribulation.

The road remained blocked for more than 100 days.

“It was extremely difficult,” Lawrence Mason, who runs Mason’s Cafe in Cape Tribulation, told news.com.au.

“We had our shop open for short periods of time servicing local people, but it was by no means economic and most businesses were completely closed,” he said.

The landslides ruined the road.

Quite the mess.

The road has since reopened and tourists are returning.

“We’re certainly doing a lot better than we were a couple of months ago, but we’ve still got a way to go to get back to full capacity,” Mr Mason said.

He encouraged tourists to visit and help get the region back on its feet.

“Everything is still just as wonderful as it was before,” Mr Mason said.

This writer visited the area as a guest of Tourism Tropical North Queensland