Whitsundays (and Airlie Beach)

---

So after a 13 hour bus journey i arrived in Airlie beach, ready to embark upon the second part of my package - a 2 day 2 night sailing trip to the Whitsunday Islands. I arrived at about 7am and just spent the day sorting stuff out and relaxing in the sun by the lagoon. They seem to have lagoons everywhere in Australia because there are so many places where you can't swim in the sea - but the lagoon in Airlie Beach was particularly nice. Anyway then at about 6pm i met up with Matt, one of the guys I was on Fraser Island with, for a couple of beers which turned into a couple more and a few more until it was about 1am and time to get some sleep. The boat didn't leave until about 2pm the next day so the morning consisted of more chilling by the lagoon and i finished my book (Deception Point gets the thumbs up from me!). Now reading On The Road by Jack Kerouac but anyway i dunno why this is relevant! So i bought a crate of pure blonde (the best beer in Oz!) and boarded the boat - i think pretty much all we did that afternoon was sail out towards the islands, eat, drink and get to know each other. There were over 50 people on the boat so it was pretty cool but not quite as nice a group as on Fraser Island. There were big groups of essex, geordie and irish girls and cockney guys - so dominated by Brits but i hung out with a group of Swedish guys and an Australian guy who all worked on a massive Yacht and sailed around Europe for most of the year - it's just owned by an Abramovich type and apparently the windows alone cost 14 million euros! Oh and his daughter's Jimmy Choo's PA but back to the Whitsundays! So plenty of drinking and talking and a good laugh but not as good as Fraser Island and were probably in bed by midnight. The boat was really nice - good cabins and good food and even a spa pool with bubbly sea water, which was pretty cool. So up the next morning and it was straight off to Whitehaven beach - the most famous on the Whitsunday Islands I think and supposedly consistently voted in the top ten worldwide. It was very nice and we looked at from above and took some photos and then went down to chill there for a while and have a swim, allbeit in our stinger suits, which was probably just as well because we did see some stingrays swimming around! Oh and I bumped into some more guys I was with on Fraser Island as well which was cool. So that was the morning and then after lunch it was time for some snorkelling and I decided to pay a bit extra and do a dive too. I really like diving but we didn't see too much more than we did snorkelling and it wasn't really any better than the one i did in Cairns (the guy said it would be but what did i expect him to say!). The snorkelling was good though and we saw loads of little brightly coloured fish - unfortunately we didn't see a turtle whilst snorkelling but we did see one by the boat later that night. Once again we were probably back at the boat by 5pm and having a few beers and then dinner and more beers - which explains why so many people were pissed by 10pm - again not a great group but it was still a decent night and we played some drinking games. Unbelievably they couldn't cope with the complexity of kings so we had to stick to ridiculous word games and something as simple as when someone crossed their arms across their chest and shouted dingo, everyone else had to and the last person had to drink! Idiotic but anyway it was fun enough but these guys really can't take their drink! So the next morning we were in a different place to snorkel but i'm not sure where. It was even better than the previous day though and there were fish everywhere - some even swam into me because they couldn't avoid me! There was also a big fish (I think a grouper but i'm not sure) that the diver's were stroking but he wasn't very far down so I dived down with my snorkel and touched him. The snorkelling was great on the last day and we made an early start on it but unfortunately we had to leave fairly early too and be back at Airlie Beach marina at midday. So that was the Whitsundays and all that was left was the after party with free pizza at phoenix bar in Airlie Beach. It was a really good night and we ended up going to a few more bars afterwards as well - and some guys from Fraser Island were out too on their after party. So all in all a good night - oh and at one point the police came in with sniffer dogs and found some drugs on one of our crew (who incidentally was from West Bridgford - small world!). I probably got about 5 or 6 hours sleep before rising early to catch the greyhound further up the coast to Townsville before heading to Magnetic Island!

---