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Published: September 23rd 2009
The Whitsunday Islands are a chain of about 70 islands off the coast of Airlie Beach, surrounded by crystal blue water, reefs loaded with fish and sea life and "officially" the most beautiful beach in the world. Ever.
We got picked up for our day cruise on the Manta Ray Boat and quickly realized that we were the only non-couple on board. Everyone else was on a romantic cruise...and then there was us. Awkward. On our way to our first island we saw humpback whales surfacing for air and then diving back down which was such a great surprise and cool to see them up close.
We arrived in a place called Luncheon Bay on Hook Island and got suited up for our 3rd and final dive. We were excited to dive but so sad that it was our last one, we are obsessed!! We jumped in the water and immediately saw several jellyfish and got a little freaked out, but they were non-stinging. We didn't dive down very far and felt like we ran out of air pretty quick, after only 22 mins. Hmmm. Our dive guide was less than great, we both thought that he had an
"LA attitude" (no offense LA friends, we love you!!) and would have been better suited there haha. We got towed back to the boat after our dive and decided to just snorkel around the boat, where we saw way more fish than on our actual dive. The guys on the boat were throwing food at us so we basically got attacked by fish haha. So in the end, we would have been better off snorkeling than diving, but we had a good time anyway.
We climbed back on the boat and they served up a huge lunch and set off for Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island. Whitehaven is a 6 km beach with stark white sand made up of 99% pure silica and turquiose blue water. We got off of the boat and were instantly in love and plotting ways to miss the boat back to Airlie 😉 We hiked up to a lookout and snapped some great shots over the beach, then basically ran down and got in the water as soon as we could. It was sooo warm, the sand was like sugar and we could see stingrays, fish, crabs and we think a sea snake (k
maybe it was a stick, but that's boring) really close to us in the clear water. The sand was so fine, we were using it like a sugar scrub exfoliant in the shallow water. When the coupley type people started staring at us when we gave each other back scrubs, we stopped hahahaha. We had about three hours of bliss there, took waaay too many pictures and were so sad when we had to leave.
The boat ride back took about 2 hours and we enjoyed it by taking pictures and talking to some of the people on the boat. So far the coolest people we've met have been on boats, I guess they're just as adventurous and cool as us. We decided to stay another night in Airlie instead of driving 2 hours south to Mackay because we were tired and really liked the town. We met back up with the crew we had gone out with the night before and played a hilarious game of King's Cup (Circle of Death/Ring of Fire/fun drinking game involving cards) for an hour or so before going to bed for our early drive the next day.
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Shannon
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It's funny..after reviewing all of these pictures, idyllic beaches and boat rides...the only one I could picture myself in is playing that game of Circle of Death :)