Airlie Beach and Whitsunday Islands

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19/2

Our bus arrived around midnight and we all waited to get checked on and store our luggage. There was a strange lady who was trying to talk to us but she seemed a little dodgy, asking us if we were going to sleep on the bus, so we tried to avoid her. Luckily we were given seat allocations and we were opposite ends of the bus! We left on time (00.25) and started our long journey. The bus driver was pretty crazy, driving very fast and kept going over the bumpy lines on the side of the road. It was very quiet, everyone seemed to be sleeping- except me of course! We stopped around 2.30 to pick up some other passengers, and I hadn't slept at all by this point. I managed to doze on and off after this until we stopped at some services for about 30 minutes. I used the toilet whilst I could rather than using the one on the bus. I managed to get a bit more sleep on and off, apart from when the driver kept going over the bumpy lines which woke me up- guess it shows they do their job! We stopped for about an hour at Townsville at about 5am, and lots of people got off the bus here, and our driver changed too. This driver was no less crazy, speeding and hitting all the bumps and lines! We both managed to sleep quite well until our next stop at services for some breakfast and to use the toilets. Back on the road, and we slept again until we were almost at our stop in Airlie beach. We made it at around 11.30am- 11 hour bus trip! There was a guy at the stop from Magnums, the company we had booked our boat trip with, so we asked him to show us where we needed to be for our trip tomorrow. He walked us to the reception area so we knew where we had to be, then we tried to find our way to our hotel, which we had no idea how to find. In the end I rang the reception to ask the way, and they gave us directions. We were allowed to check in early which was great as we were pretty tired, and very hot, wandering around with our rucksacks on. Our room was lovely, like luxury- we had free wifi, a jacuzzi and direct pool access, and we also had a Nintendo wii- not that we used it. We had a much needed shower and then a swim in the pool. We also tried out our jacuzzi, which was very nice. We stayed in the hotel all day, we didn't even leave for dinner- we used the free wifi to order a Dominos delivery! Yum! We spent the evening relaxing and getting all our bags and everything we needed ready for our boat trip tomorrow, then had a nice early night as we were tired after a lack of sleep from the bus journey.

20/2

We got up and checked out of our lovely hotel- boohoo! We got a taxi to the Magnums office as didn't fancy walking with all our stuff, especially as we had extra bags to take on the boat. We had to check in between 9 and 10 for our boat trip, which we did, and then left our luggage in the storage area at magnums (backpacker place). We headed into Airlie beach to pick up a few last minute bits (including sea sickness tablets for me!) and walked to Abel Point marina where our boat was leaving from. We were there very early and sat and had some lunch and an ice cream in a cafe at the marina. At 12.45 we headed down to the boat boarding area, where we met our deckhand Timi, from Hungary. We had to pay $20 for our stingers suits for the duration of the trip. We waited for the other passengers to arrive and then we all headed to our boat Prima, where we met the captain Giles, from Australia. There were 9 guests in total- us two, a lovely Irish couple named Sarah and Will, 2 Canadian girls called Erika and Jeanette and a family of 3 Chinese, of which, only the son, David, spoke any English (and he was fluent, having lived in England for a while). We were given a safety briefing and shown to our cabins. It was tiny- we were in the bow, and the bed was almost triangular shaped. We had a tiny little bathroom too, but at least it was our own! We sat up on the deck for a while, talking to Sarah and Will. We could see a lot of jellyfish in the water, but apparently the ones you can see aren't the ones you have to worry about! We all got ready for our first snorkel session, pulling on our stinger suits. The boat moored up to a buoy and we all jumped in the tender to go over to the coral and jumped in and went on search for some fishies! The visibility wasn't all that great- Giles told us this was because there had recently been a lot of rain, which washes into the sea and sits on top of the salt water, making it more difficult to sea. We did manage to see some fish and coral, but after the Great Barrier Reef trip at Cairns, it was a little disappointing. We all headed back onboard Prima and had some delicious Nachos that Timi had made. We then sailed off to our spot for the night, where we all chatted on deck and watched the sun set. We had a lovely chicken curry with rice, cooked by Timi, and some yummy cake for pudding. We all headed back out on deck and chatted, until Giles kicked us off, as he and Timi sleep in little swag sacks on deck. We sat inside for a while a chatted until we were all tired and went off to our cabins to hopefully sleep! It was very hot, and not particularly comfy, so it wasn't easy to get to sleep!

21/2

We didn't have a good night's sleep! It was very hard to get comfy, and our cabin was so hot, with just a tiny fan, blowing in the corner, that did nothing to cool us down. We were woken up at 5.30 by Giles hoisting anchor right above our cabin, then the engines were on and we were headed off. I actually found it easier to sleep at this time, and dozed off for the best hour's sleep I had all night. Chantelle didn't find it so easy to sleep again and got up and had a quick spray shower, then woke me up to tell me that breakfast was ready. Feeling rather sleepy, I got up and sprayed some water on my face and we sat down to breakfast- in the same spaces we sat atdinner last night- places had been claimed! We had cereal, toast and some fruit, then we were almost at Whitehaven beach, a must stop for all Whitsunday island trips, with its beautiful white sand. We were stopping here for a few hours. We took our stinger suits with us, and jumped in the tender to get the the island. We were there nice and early, before all the other boats flocked in, so we had the place to ourselves for a little while. We walked up to a lookout point and took some photos over Whitsunday Island. There were quite a few lizards, including a huge iguana. We sat on the beach for a little while, but we got pretty hot, so we put on our stinger suits and just sat in the sea with Sarah and Will, chatting for almost 2 hours. We saw some big shadows in the water, which we think we're huge rays, but we didn't want to get too close to find out! Giles brought the tender back to collect us and we headed back to Prima and headed off for another spot, having biscuits on the deck- I think Timi must be a Feeder! We stopped to snorkel, but the visibility was pretty poor here, so we didn't see much, and we all felt like we were getting little stings on our hands and feet etc, so we all got out of the water and went back onboard Prima and had a lovely lunch of chicken, Asian noodle salad, and potato salad. After lunch we sunbathed on the deck for a bit whilst we headed to our next snorkel spot. We had to moor up around the corner from the spot we were going, as it was quite busy with other boats. We got in the tender and went around the corner to our snorkel spot. There were some huge fish here, absolute giants, and Giles started throwing them bits of cut up sausage. They moved so quickly, and were quite shark-like in their movements- it was a rather scary and made us a little hesitant to get in, but Giles said they wouldn't bite...just mind your fingers! Again, the visibility was poor, we couldn't see all that much and were very worried about the giant fish swimming around us. We stayed close together!! The water was lovely and warm here though. We jumped back in the tender and back to Prima to head off for our night's stopover. As we were pulling in to moor for the night we saw a few dolphins porpoising which was cool. I'm glad we got to see some in the ocean. We had another delicious dinner and watched the sunset again, which was followed by a huge storm with lots of lightning, and some rain. It seemed to go on all night. We stayed on deck quite late chatting, as Giles and Timi slept inside tonight because of the weather. We had to close our roof window because of the rain, but it made our room so hot, sleeping was almost impossible!

22/2

We weren't up quite as early this morning, thankfully, after a pretty awful night's sleep, waking up for ages in the night, being so hot. Chantelle woke before me and had a quick shower (strict water allowances, meant we were extremely quick if we got a shower). I got up and started having a shower too, but the water was turned off halfway through when I still had soap on my hair! Chantelle had to ask Timi to turn it back on. We were a bit annoyed, as we hadn't had a proper wash at all, and most other people on the boat hadn't either, and as we were about to head back to town, we didn't understand why the water was turned off! I managed to finish my shower, and then when everyone else was up, we had breakfast, around 7.30. We got fried eggs as well today which was nice. We set off for Airlie beach around 8, and we all sat on deck, chatted and took some photos on our way back in. We got in around 11, after all having a little turn steering the boat in the captains hat! We sad good bye and thank you to Giles and Timi and the Xu family. We had arranged to meet the others at the lagoon in town. We headed straight off to the lagoon, as our hotel for the night was a little way out of town and check in wasn't until 2. The others all headed off to their hotel/campsite and then came to the lagoon later on. It was very hot and it was nice to have a safe place to swim without stinger suits! Sarah and Will joined us and we all sat around in the pool chatting. Jeanette and Erika came along just as Chantelle and I were about to leave, so we said bye to everyone and then headed off to Magnums to collect our luggage. We then got a taxi to our motel, where there was no one to greet us at reception, just a key in an envelope with my name on it. Our room was big- a self-contained unit. We had a proper shower and then headed out to some local shops to get something for dinner, where we bumped into Sarah and Will again! We got ourselves a take-away from the Thai (no prizes for guessing what we had!) and headed back to our room to eat and made sure we were ready to go in the morning. I was absolutely exhausted and feeling very dizzy from the boat, I had to take some sea sickness tablets, but they didn't help. I fell straight to sleep, not able to keep my eyes open to watch the film on TV!

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