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Published: March 25th 2013
We have to apologise in this blog for getting overexcited with our photos and videos, again! We have a new toy in the shape of an underwater camera and we took so many photos that we managed to use up the whole battery in the space of a day. Count yourselves lucky we didn't upload the full 300 shots and eight videos!!
We have spent the last few days staying in Airlie Beach, which is the mainland base for visiting the Whitsunday Islands. We were pretty disappointed when we arrived on Thursday morning to discover that it was forecast to rain for the next four days but, armed with a hard-drive full of films and episodes of Mad Men, we settled in to wait for our planned sailing trip, which we'd booked for Saturday and Sunday. Every time the rain paused for a bit we would wander down into town in search of food, but this generally resulted in us getting soaked through and attacked by more evil mosquitos!
Saturday morning dawned bright, with a few puffy white clouds, and we began to hope that our luck might be turning around...it had! - even though it rained as we
pulled out of the marina, it didn't last long and we were soon sailing along in beautiful conditions. We had chosen to stay one night on a boat called Iceberg, which was a proper sailing trip rather than a motor boat, after enjoying our day out in the Bay of Islands so much. We had a lovely friendly crew - three Aussies: one from Queensland, one from Victoria and one from Western Australia, so perfect for travel advice. We also had a lovely bunch of fellow travellers - three other couples, of around the same age, and a group of four girls.
Saturday was spent snorkelling in various gorgeous bays, sailing along in between whilst lounging around on deck in the sun. As the Whitsundays have an abundance of Irukandji jellyfish, getting in the water involved first donning your 'stinger suit' for protection and then putting on your mask and snorkel as normal. A stinger suit can only be described as a fleece lined lycra onesie - not a particularly good look, but actually perfect for keeping you nice a warm while you floated around, looking at all the amazing coral. The absolute highlight of the day was seeing
a Sea Turtle on our first snorkel - fantastic! One of the other girls spotted him hiding amongst the coral, and we then proceeded to watch him for so long that he got bored of us and swam off to find somewhere else to hide...hence a lot of video footage of a swimming turtle (videoing in the water is pretty hard it turns out, as the waves don't really help you to hold the camera steady!).
At our second snorkel spot, Blue Pearl Bay, the water was much clearer, and we were able to get some photos of the lovely variety of coral (some of it looked like brains, some like trees, and loads of it just like it does in Finding Nemo!). In this bay, just around the corner from a luxury hotel, the fish were used to being fed by snorkellers and so they were incredibly tame. This included a MASSIVE fish called Elvis - he was about 1.5m long, blue and had a lump on his lead like an impressive quiff!
In the afternoon, we set sail from Blue Pearl Bay to head through Hook passage to a sheltered spot where we could anchor for
the night. The crew cooked up a delicious dinner, whilst we sat around on deck chatting with the other passengers, celebrating the lack of mozzies! We had a pretty early night - a bit like the camper, there's not much to do on a boat once it's dark - in preparation for a 6am start the next day...ouch!
Sunday morning dawned even better than Saturday, with not a cloud in the sky and we headed straight to Whitehaven Beach after an early breakfast (fortunately involving plenty of freshly brewed coffee). Whitehaven Beach is the classic picture postcard beach on Whitsunday Island, and it was absolutely stunning - Hazel thought she had died and gone to sunbathing heaven as it had perfect white sand, turquoise sea and a lovely rainforest backdrop. Mark just enjoyed another opportunity to wear his onesie! We snoozed on the beach for an hour or so, topping up our tans and taking bucket loads more photos.
In the afternoon, we sailed back into the marina in Airlie Beach, stopping off for another snorkel at the aptly named 'Coral Garden' - as we'd killed the battery on the underwater camera by this point, we just floated
around checking out all of the amazing coral. You'll just have to take our word for it that it was pretty fantastic.
Sunday evening was spent trying desperately not to sway when we closed our eyes...not sure we've quite got our land legs back yet!
turtle:
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Christine
non-member comment
Oh my goodness that fish is massive!! Not sure I would have been comfortable swimming beside him! You both look so refreshed and tanned...jealous!! xx