Day 107

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So, I know it's been AGES since my last post, and I apologise for that... Nothing really happened, you see, and I don't want to waste your time on filling an entry with variations of nothing. I guess in the grand scheme of the universe, stuff did happen. Let's see... I was in 1770 when I last posted. Three girls who I befriended back in Noosa on the canoe trip turned up a few days in, which was nice. I knew it was happening though - we've looked at each others' itineraries. They are now in Airlie Beach with me for a day, which is also very nice.

Anyway, on my last day in 1770 I did this tour called "Scooteroo". I heard rave reviews about it throughout my travels - I had even heard about it while I was still in NZ. The guide who leads the tour (Rod, aka Hot Rod) is a pervy 60-something yr old who's been rated as one of the top five most legendary guides worldwide. He is definitely very special. The idea is that you do a 60km ride around the area, on a scooter. This isn't just a scooter though - oh no. It's a scooter that's been remodelled to look like a Harley Davidson. They've even got flames and things like that painted on the sides, and you wear a proper leather biker jacket when you do it. It was FANTASTIC. They go pretty fast - I got up to 80km/h on mine. The first stop was to have a look at kangaroos - the first time I saw them in the wild, very exciting. Then we went all the way to the headland and the beach, to watch the sun set over the ocean (the only place on the East Coast where you can see that from the mainland). We had wedges while we were watching, which was absolutely perfect. The trip was great fun, absolutely hilarious at times, and the best value-for-money activity that I've done so far in Australia (and NZ actually).

The next day I left, heading towards Airlie Beach. The drive from 1770 to Airlie Beach is about 10 hours long, but because I'm on a special tour-bus kind of thing (quite hard to explain) they have a stop three hours away from 1770. It's a cattle station, called Kroombit. They give you an idea of the real part of Australia, the outback... And how cows, goats etc work when you've got farms that are so much bigger than any Brit can even imagine. To put it into context, the biggest cattle station in Australia is the same size as Switzerland. They use helicopters to muster their cattle. We had the opportunity to try "goat mustering". For those of you who've grown up in the city - that means finding goats and herding them together towards a pen, then herding them into the pen. On horseback. It was great fun, although it was harder than I had expected (partly to do with the number of inexperienced riders). We were then taught to throw a lasso (definitely something I'll find useful when I get home...) and crack a whip (which I'm surprisingly good at). The evening ended with a stint on the mechanical bull (didn't go well for me...).

The next day we had the drive to Airlie Beach, a long full-day drive. I met some cool people on the bus and bonded with them along the way. We also watched the film Australia, possibly the longest film in the entire universe (which suits a long journey). It was about cattle mustering at the beginning, which was definitely relevant to what we just did, so if you want a better idea of how it works then watch the film. We crossed over the Tropic of Capricorn on the way up. "What does this mean?", I hear you ask. Well. The weather gets more tropical - which means humid with frequent bursts of very heavy (but warm) rain. My original hostel didn't have any air conditioning which meant that you could smell the sweat on your body, even if you'd showered 5 minutes earlier (I'm in a air-conditioned one now, you'll be relieved to know/smell). Because it's tropical, there's also a lot more rainforest which is very dense. And there are TONS of crocodiles. So many crocodiles that they're going to decide in a few years whether or not to introduce a cull (and it seems likely they will), and what's more is that they'll turn it into a tourist activity. Crocodiles are incredible, they've barely evolved for 200 million years. They've reached this state of perfection. They don't get sick (up until recently when they started getting skin cancer for sunbathing too much) and they've survived whatever wiped out the dinosaurs. However, they are very very dangerous. A lot of the time, you can't see them in the water. If they're hungry they lie at the bottom of the river watching the bank and then BOOM they grab whatever takes their fancy. They then drown their prey and eat them at their own leisure. A significant number of people get attacked in Australia by crocodiles every year. They have warning signs next to all the ponds and rivers here, in English and German (German tourists are the ones who have been eaten the most, they used to dry their towels on the warning signs). The other great thing about this part of Australia is that the sea is filled with stingers (jellyfish). The worst two are the box jellyfish and the blue bottle jellyfish. If your sting goes untreated, you die. Best thing to do is put vinegar on it, and at all the beaches up this part of the coast they have vinegar bottles next to the warning signs. If you go swimming in the sea, you have to wear a stinger suit, which is a thin wetsuit that covers your whole body apart from your hands and head (you wear a little hood too though). It doesn't actually prevent you from getting stung, it just makes it painful instead of deadly.

Airlie Beach is alright, pretty boring. There's a lagoon, but the weather has been pretty uninteresting. It's thick cloud right now, and it was raining quite a lot before. It's wet season at the moment though, should be coming out of it any minute now. The reason people come here is for the Whitsunday Islands...

Most people do a boat trip to see the islands, and to snorkel around the coral reef. I booked my trip way back in Sydney, but I decided to pay slightly more for it because I wanted an unforgettable experience (I also assumed that I wouldn't be coming back here any time soon). A lot of the boats are party boats, where they take people out, get them drunk and let them sleep off the hangover on a boat. I obviously don't want that. I also wanted one which lasted three full days, so I left early in the morning and got back at about 5pm two days later. My boat also had the added bonuses of having a hot tub and kayaks that we could take out. It wasn't by any means the most expensive boat, but it was probably about £100 more expensive than the boats that most backpackers go on. And it was money well spent.

The first day, it rained a lot. I met and chatted with teh other people on the boat: Thomas (the only other one travelling on his own; from Austria), Nieke and Anna (sisters from Holland), Simone and Sarah (friends from Denmark), Susie and Birgit (friends from Austria), Adam and Anna (couple from UK - Brighton), and Verina and Bjorn (VERY loved up couple from Germany). Unlike Fraser Island, I got on with everyone. All of the people on the boat were like-minded in terms of what they wanted from their Whitsunday experience, and they were all people that I could be friends with if we had met while at home. The crew was made up of three people - Flo was the diving instructor, and he was from Germany. There was Cookie who was the skipper, a very tatooed (and pierced) New Zealander who used to be a chef in a very good restaurant. Last but not least there was Shaz, an Australian girl who was in charge of food. The food was FANTASTIC. I ate so well in those three days that my money could have paid for that alone. Each meal was bigger, and more varied, than what I would normally eat in a week out here. For example, the first dinner was barbequed chicken (with some delicious marinade on it), with beans, greek salad, pasta bake and garlic bread. And then there was chocolate cake with custard for pudding. The boat was small (which was a good thing) and we slept in bunks below deck. It got pretty hot in the night, but I'm getting used to that now. In the afternoon, on the first day, we went kayaking where the coral was really shallow (far too shallow to snorkel). We saw turtles and stingrays, along with plenty of fish and lots of coral. That night we moored in this beautiful bay where there were loads of turtles.

The second day was sunny. Thank god. We went to Whitehaven Beach. If you google the Whitsunday Islands, that's the picture that comes up. The sand is the purest sand in the world, something to do with silica content. They made the Hubble telescope from that sand. It's really white, and it can polish your jewelry, clean your skin and your teeth. I didn't take my camera with me because that beach is renowned for killing cameras. The sand gets into the works, scratches the lenses etc. Shaz took one of the boat's cameras (they took photos of us all the time, also in the water) but unfortunately it clouded up and the photos on whitehaven were pretty rubbish. We then had lunch while we sailed to the next spot. We went snorkelling for a few hours. The snorkelling wasn't as good as what I've experienced elsewhere. The visibility is pretty poor, so unless you can hold your breath and dive down, you can't see all that much. Fortunately I can, and I found Nemo (along with tons of other fish). It was nice to warm up in a hot tub afterwards!! I did see a few jellyfish too, even though it's strictly speaking the end of stinger season. That evening we watched a beautiful sunset, stuffed our faces, and were in bed by 9pm.

The third, and final day, was rainy and cloudy. We started snorkelling in this one place, but we could honestly see absolutely nothing, and the waves were huge. We went to a different place, which was calmer and nice. It did rain though. After a quick hot tub, we set sail back for Airlie Beach.

I could have gone diving off the boat, doing what they call "intro dives" where you just go down pretty shallow (relatively speaking) and you're watched by the diving instructor at all times. I decided not to though, because I'm doing a dive course in Cairns in a few weeks time. I'm drawing ever closer to the end of this holiday, and to be quite honest I can't wait to get home. I'm still enjoying myself A LOT, and I'm glad I'm doing it... But I can't wait to have a full night's sleep, to have my own space, to not be living out of a backpack, to have a balanced diet which involves a nice amount of fresh fruit and veg. And so much more.

I head to Magnetic Island tomorrow, where I can look forward to koalas in the wild, more snorkelling, and hopefully more scooter riding. I then go to Mission Beach for two nights (not sure what to expect from there), and then it's Cairns, the official end of my trip. I have 10 days in Cairns - two where I go up further north on a trip to Cape Tribulation. I have a five day scuba diving course, by the end of which I'll have a qualification which means I can dive anywhere in the world. As part of the course, I spend 3 days on a boat out on the reef which will be fantastic. I've heard that the course I'm doing is the best course in Cairns, maybe even Australia. I head back to Sydney for a few days, have a trip to the Blue Mountains and then I go HOME!!! I'm very glad I'm flying Emirates - a lot of people are meant to stop over in Bangkok and are having to divert their flights because their insurance doesn't cover anything that might happen to them there.

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