Paradise

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Our last trip was amazing! We traveled by night bus to Airlie Beach (12 hours total), the bus ride was great and we all slept the entire way! Once there we got some lunch we checked in for our boat trip, 3 days/2 nights of sailing in the Whitsunday Islands. The ride was smooth from the beginning and we ended the first day with a great dinner on the boat and good drinks with the whole boat, about 20 backpackers in all.

The next day we woke up at 7 and started sailing. The water was a little rough to say the least, the boat was so bumpy that I wasn't even able to put jam on my toast because it was physically to hard to move across the kitchen, of course that didn’t really matter because the sea sickness got to me within 10 minutes....oh well! I felt pretty good after that and we arrived at Whitehaven beach soon after witch is voted the 2nd best beach in the world and its supposed to have the nicest sand in the whole world. The views and water were amazing, minus the fact that we had to wear a full body stingray suit (didn't want to have any Steve Erwin’s in the group). All the girls did facials with the sand, the crew even told us you could brush your teeth with it because its so fine, but no one felt like having a mouthful of sand. I wish I could put up pictures but we had to take a small tender to this island and the crew told us not to take our cameras 😞

Afterwards we went snorkeling and swimming. The fish and coral in the Great Barrier Reef are amazing; I realized how lucky I was to be doing this all so soon in my life. The whole experience was amazing, and we didn't even have to put on sunscreen thanks to the suits we were wearing. During the evening we had another great meal and goon, then one of the crew members showed us a map of everywhere we had been during the day and also told us a little about the islands. A lot of movies have been filmed here, and one of the islands (Hamilton Island) is where the 'greatest job in the world' was offered at.

This morning we woke up and went snorkeling right after breakfast. We had some more amazing views and saw a huge fish named Elvis that roams the area. He is so big and totally used to all the people in the area so you can swim right along with him and some people were able to touch him. Pretty Amazing.

The entire trip was amazing and surreal that we are all able to experience such beauty. This was the perfect thing to do after the stressful trip to Fraser Island.

Now we are all off to shower, get ready, and go have some drinks and pizza with the rest of the group from the boat!

Hope everyone is doing well at home, enjoy the snow (I saw some pics earlier from Weaverville)!

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