Anaconda 3

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Well I cannot describe how AMAZING the sailing trip was, it was actually paradise!!! And another highlight of my trip it was just amazing!!!!!
We booked for 3 days and 3 nights, and boarded at about 7pm and found a glass of champagne in my hand!! We were all shown to our cabins and it was fine and comfortable I felt a lil bit like I was on the Titanic!! We met all the crew, and then out came some snacks- carrot stick, celery and dips and cubes of cheese (and we all know I love cheese!!!!!) and we settled in and set sail the 6 hours to Whitehaven Beach in the dark. I've never really sailed before, have been on a fair few boats in Thailand and crossed to the Magnetics on ferrys and stuff but not really anything like this- but I didn't get seasick once!! WOOP!!
There were 31 people altogether on the boat, and everyone just had a few drinks and got chatting on the first night!! We woke up in PARADISE on whitehaven beach, and took little speedboats over to the beach which was 7k or 5k of pure white silica sand- one of the crew members actually cleaned my jewellery with it and my rings are more sparkly than ever!!! We all got involved and played beach volleyball (i was amazing at serving, but not so good at anything else hehe) and beach cricket and stuff it was so much fun. When we were in the lil speed boats going back to the island too , loads of sea turtles kept on popping their heads up to the surface it was so cool!!!!
In the afternoon we went for our first snorkel on the Great Barrier Reef and that was just incredible I couldn't actually believe I was there!! And the stinger suit I was wearing was ever so attractive hehe. I saw billions and billions of fish, some were HUGE like, the length of my legs! Now I know my legs arent very long, but still they were HUGE! The ranges of colours of the fish too- oh my word, There were illuminous pink, orange, blue, yellow, in shoals. The coral itself was so beautiful too, I must've been snorkelling for a good hour and a half at least that time!
Later that afternoon we all chilled on the boat, had good food and chatted, just a really nice relaxing evening. The next day we snorkelled three times in different areas, one of the areas we were on had a ridiculously strong current and I found it really really difficult to swim throught it to the edges as the current wasnt as strong there, but one of the crew members said that once we'd reached the top bit of that coral, if we moved onto the coral then the current would just take us down over the whole section of the outer reef and all we'd need to do was just float and look and it'd be a little like a movie etc, that was SO SO cool!! I can't even describe quite how it happened!!
Then a deadly box jelly fish swam right past my face!!! I was a little tiny bit freaked out by that- quite justifiably so i think!! But I was fine and had an incredible day all the same. Just before I came in, we spottet a
sea turtle on the ocean bed playing with a fish!!It was properly
batting it around having fun, it really made me smile!! I named
him Tyrone. He loved it!
In the afternoon, one of the crew caught a Tuna fish- i had NO idea how HUGE they are- when I can borrow a camera cable i'll upload my pictures, well over a meter long it was and really really wide too- they said it'd be worth $2000 if we'd gone straight back and sold it, but we were about 12 hours sailing away somewhere in the middle of the ocean, so we decided to eat it!!
I ate raw tuna fish and oh my word it was so yummy!!! We also had tuna sushi- raw and cooked. Delish. The freshest fish i'll ever taste I think!!
Later that night we had some drinks and tea and were sat on deck all chatting as usual and we saw loads of green flashes in the sea, we asked Baz (the legend that was our skipper) what it was and he said to look carefully and it was squid! Loads and loads of squid! I tried to take pictures but they just didnt come out, still it was amazing!
On the last day came the highlight of my trip- when I was on the reef i saw TWO SHARKS!!! TWO SHARKS SWIMMING BENEATH ME!!!!!!!! one was a white tip reef shark, one was a black tip reef shark. They were awesome so graceful and huge!!! The white tip was a good meter and a half! The black tip wasn't quite a meter i'd say but it was awesome!!! Then as we got onto the boat we saw a HUGE fin and tail in the distance and baz said that'b be one of the bigger sharks although he couldnt tell which one just by the fin- how scary!! Some dolphins decided to come and play next to the boat as we set off for home, it was the perfect end to a perfect trip!! I loved it!!!
I'm in Cairns now, just back from A Cape Tribulation through the jungle and the islands where Captain Cook landed- it was fab i'll tell all in my next entry it was fab- i was a cowgirl for the day!!!

Much love

Marianne
xxxxxx

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