Part 9 AIrlie Beach & Whitsundays

---

Awesome sleep in a fantastic bed, and so far no spiders or snakes have tried to murder us. But we will remain ever-vigilant. We landed at Proserpine Airport where holy balls it is insanely hot (hottest weather we've had thus far). We met up with Ceanna Bawtinheimer and Ian St. Pierre, our two friends who were traveling through Fiji then Cairns before hooking up with us. After a joyous reunion, we piled into the car to drive to Airlie Beach, a tiny resort town that is the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitsunday_Islands). The Whitsundays are always on the Top 5 List for things to do when you get to Australia, so we plan on hitting those up tomorrow.



We learned it is not wise to go into the water without a stinger suit as it is currently stinger season (jellyfish and whatnot), so swimming in the ocean might get you into trouble). But like Brisbane, a little sand lagoon is right on shore that you can swim in, so we hiot that up to beat the heat. Had some delicious pizza and Aussie beer (XXXX Gold...superb) at Mangrove Jack's. We learned quickly that Australia is going to beat up our bank accounts... a six pack of cheap beer will easily set you back 15-20 dollars.



For supper we cooked some weiners on our camp barbecue (Aussies love their barbies...it's barely even a stereotype...literally every park has about 4 publicly available BBQs). We also met Jax...the most insanely hyper four year-old that I have ever met. Jax also happens to be a particularly suave toddler, as he was wheeling two different girls in the same communal kitchen. Pretty ballsy move, but the kid pulled it off. He gave everyone in the communal kitchen a hug and a intensive interview on their life story before he tasmanian devil-d his way back to his campsite.



Happy Halloween! They do not really celly Halloween over here, but we've seen a few kids trick or treating and more than a few Halloween themed pub crawls. We were awoken in our tiny tent by some insanely hilarious/annoying birds called kookaburras (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kookaburra#Music). Wikipedia claims that a kookaburra's call sounds like human laughter...I disagree. It sounds like an insane monkey chattering away. Jax's site is right across from us and the little guy was already up, hauling ass around his site in undies and rainboots. We sailed the Whitsundays today, and had a pretty smooth ride out though it weirdly rained on us for about 2 minutes. Our sailing trip involved us getting to snorkel the Great Barrier Reef. I had mixed emotions about this. On the one hand, I have been training for months to learn how to swim well enough to snorkel in the ocean and I am incredibly excited to test my new skills...on the other hand I still suck an insane amount at swimming and my natural human instinct to not die is ringing slightly. But our cool Aussie instructors (one drove the boat with his feet) made me feel pretty safe, along with the stinger suits we rented, so I hopped in, allowed myself two seconds of panic and regret, then got down to business.



It. Was. Incredible. (Sorry, I hate when people do that and I think that's like the third time I've done that on this blog)



The reef was not as colorful as in pictures, but apparently that's normal...the photos you see in books and online are due to aritifical light that photographers use, which allows one to see all the true colors of the reef (whereas while snorkelling, all you have is the sun to light it up). It did not make it any less amazing to see the brightly colored fish, massive clamshells, ridiculously detailed reef architecture...hard to describe in proper words. We go to snorkel for about an hour than hopped back on the boat to do some island hopping and Whitehaven Beach. It felt like we were crusiing around the Island in LOST (a running theme on this trip).



Now...Whitehaven Beach. For those of you have been there you know what I mean when I say you've never experienced real sand until you've been there. Whitehaven Beach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitehaven_Beach) has sand made of 98% pure silica, which makes it so brillianlty white it's almost tough to look at it. The sand is so incredibly soft, but retains no heat from the sun, making it so comfortable to walk on. It is actually illegal to take sand of Whitehaven Beach, and we saw a woman get repirmanded for attempting to put some in a ziploc. NASA actually used Whitehaven sand beach to make the lens for the Hubble telescope (as our guide told us), because the sand is so perfect. It feels like a million tiny pillows as you run across it (it squeaks and sighs). Ian buried me in the sand and made me a woman (that sounds wrong when I read that over again but oh well), and it was so soft I nearly fell asleep. The water is this perfectly clear turqoise blue, that is so clear I could even just snorkel on the beach and try to catch fish. The guy would throw food into the water to draw the fish and I would go under water and get smacked by all these fish as they go insane trying to eat the bread. That story kind of went nowhere eh? The island itself has no buildings, cars, basically anything except a few huts for toilets. We ate lunch, mediterranean-style, and it was incredibely delicious (second best meal of the trip). The island (along with many areas in Oz) has these awesome lizards (cannot recall the name) that look like mini komodo dragons with brighter colors. We were allowed to feed some by tossing them little bits of shrimp and such. One guy on the tour got cocky and tried to feed him directly from his hand but the lizard bit him pretty hard. They have these double-sided razor teeth and the dude bled a solid amount.



We were all very depressed to leave one of the top 10 beaches on Earth, but alas we had no choice and bid farewell to Whitehaven. One problem with pure white sand...gets everywhere and is fairly impossible to get out.

---