Airlie Beach and Whitsundays

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Had an 11 hour journey to Airlie Beach and Wednesday! We stopped in Sarina and did lawn bowling which was pretty random and I got perved on by some of the old men there! I'm even worse at lawn bowling than I am at 10 pin bowling and I came to the conclusion that I pretty much suck at all activities! I keep trying and hey its the taking part that counts! :P Arrive in Airlie quite late in the evening and feeling pretty stressed! Had a lot to sort out this evening to get ready for our Whitsundays trip tomorrow. Had to do laundry as I have run out of clean clothes, as well as meet our bus group for food. Had an amazing pizza at the Downunder bar, possibly the best pizza I have ever tasted!!! Failed to top up my travel money card tonight, it just won't work so feeling pretty stressed about lack of cash and realised I have lost my camera charger!! 😞 Probably left it in Agnes Waters, so really gutted about that!! 😞 Felt like I just wanted to go home tonight, so put my music on to try to relax and hoped things will be better tomorrow.

Boarded our boat Siska at 8am on Thursday morning. When we were all down inside and being allocated beds I got really claustrophobic and had a bit of a panic attack so had to back up on deck to calm down, never quite experienced anything like that before. Really glad I didn't end up in one of the tiny cubby hole beds though! Me and Anwen got a double above Rob and Rochelle, and there was a window above us so that helped. After everyone was settled we sailed out to a place called Hook island where we then got off the boat to do some snorkling. First time snorkling the great barrier reef. Saw some pretty cool coral, like the different colours, saw lots of purples and pinks, and oranges and yellows and some blue and green 😊 The fish here are also amazing!! Saw some truly massive ones, and my favourite fish was a black and purple one. We then snorkled at one more site before sailing to where we were anchoring up for the night. The night on the boat was a little bit boring, no-one was really doing anything, we had a few drinks but it was so quiet, saw we decided to play 20 questions, guess the famous person to entertain ourselves. Sleeping on a sailing boat is pretty weird and it still swayed a lot even when it was anchored.

In the morning we sailed to Whitehaven beach, and spent a few hours there. It is a beautiful beach with the softest whitest sand ever! I have never seen or felt anything quite like it it was amazing. We went in the water here looking for stingrays but didn't find any and then sunbathed for a while before heading back to the beach. We had food, the food on the boat was amazing too, before sailing back to Airlie Beach. On the sail back we all sunbathed on deck and the weather was beautiful for the whole trip. I felt a bit sea sick a few times inside the boat but on deck I was fine and kept taking my sea sickness tablets.

When we got back to Airlie, we had to go straight to the doctors to get our dive medicals done. They tested our ears, our breathing capacity, blood pressure, heart, stomach, and balance. I still felt liek I was on the boat swaying back and forth so I almsot failed the balance test but I got a second try and did better and we both passed and have been approved for scuba diving!!! :D

Back at the hostel we managed to wangle a shower even though we have officially checked out and hung around for a bit before meeting Rob and Rochelle for food. Our bus tonight is at 2.25am!!! We were all too knackered for partying or staying at a bar and luckily they managed to sneak us back to their hostel where we all watched a film and us 3 girls fell asleep! Luckily Rob stayed away and woke us all in time to go catch our bus. Slept as much as I could on the bus, thankfully at this time of night the buses are really quiet so we all got a double seat each. Arrived in Townsville at 7am in time to catch the 7.05 ferry to Magnetic Island.

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