Whitsunday Islands Day 1

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We were up early and all packed and the hotel let us leave our stuff in their storage. We ordered a taxi to take us down to the harbour as we didn't want to leave our car down their for 2 days. We met several others waiting for the same boat while we waited. There was mostly young backpackers. One young backpacker had her aunt with her so mom and dad weren't the only older people. However, all the backpackers were either from Germany or Switzerland or Austria and all spoke some form of German.

We got all checked in with the guy from the boat and were given our stinger suit for snorkeling. Then we proceeded down to the boat. The boat is designed to sleep 23 people but I think it would be very cramped if there was 23 people! Glad we only have 14 with the crew. Our first instructions were to remove our shoes. No shoes while on the boat. They were all put into a bag and stored away. We had to bring our own drinks so those were put straight into the coolers and we proceeded to the cabin to recieve more instructions. One of the crew, James from England came and had a little talk with us. After that we were free to do as we pleased.

We didn't get the sails up as there was virtually no wind and would take us ages to get to the famous Whitehaven beach. The islands in this area are beautiful! There is one island that has a mega exclusive resort on it that Oprah stayed at with her fans for her show. It costs something like $5000 a night ridiculous! We made our way to Whitehaven beach. The sailboat can only get so far so we all grabbed what we needed and hopped into the little zodiac and were taken to shore that way. We were given our shoes back and had to do a little hike to a lookout over the beach. It was a stunning place. Not quite what I had expected but still beautiful. We could see sting rays in the water from above which was cool.

After getting our photos we headed down to the beach. We had to put our stinger suits on if we wanted to go into the water so we cramped our bodies into them and headed into the water. It was beautiful, nice and warm and so clear. We could see stingrays swimming near us curious but not getting to close to us. The sand here is so soft, fine and very white as it's mostly silica. We all got out of our stinger suits and headed back to our little zodiac.

Once back on our sailboat called "The Hammer" we spotted a huge turtle in the water just 10 meters from the boat. I didn't get a picture of him with his head out of the water so he just looks like a big rock in the pictures but he was really cool. He stayed at the surface for a few minutes and then headed down under the water again. Because we had no wind our skipper Mick decided to take us to a snorkeling spot instead. We all hopped into the water once we were back in our stinger suits.

The water here wasn't as clear or as nice as it was up in Cairns. The sun had finally decided to come out for us which was nice. We spent 45 minutes in the water snorkeling. THe fish in this area are so amazing, they get quite close to you and the crew was throwing bread in the water to attract the fish to us which for someone afraid of fish was not so cool haha. From here we headed to the spot where we would have our dinner and stop for the night.

A couple of other boats also use this as their overnight spot. We saw these huge fish swimming around the boat that are called Batfish. They are HUGE and very friendly. Dad could touch them off the back of the boat. They are apparently garbage eaters and will eat anything so they don't taste very good according to our crew. Our crew made a really awesome dinner for us and we got to watch a pretty beautiful sun setting even though there was a few clouds. The crew likes to sleep on the deck of the boat and the 2 younger ones set up their swags near the back of the boat. We had been talking about squid and how they've seen them just jump onto boats and do random things. Next minute James went back to check his bed and a squid had just jumped onto his pillow haha. They sure are ugly and it inked on his pillow haha.

We also saw a cuttlefish, they look like part octopus part fish. They are pretty cool too. We all sat around chatting in the dark and listening to the serenity (hehe).

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Comments

[Gail]

SUNSET!
Great sunset photos and great tans!!!!