Airlie Beach!!!!! I was so excited to come here, heard so much about the party town and the Whitsunday's trip. We arrived at around 3pm, it was roasting hot, we each had our rucksacks and an extremely heavy bag in each hand, the sweat was like a waterfall down my stomach (oh and I hear its snowing back home), after walking from one side of town to the other, we arrived at Beaches Hostel, a group of Danish people from Asylum, our Cairns hostel, told us to stay there. We dumped the bags and quickly get the hell out of the dump of a room they excepted us to sleep in, it was a 10 bed dorm and it was the grottiest one we've been in. There were a few randoms people staying there, a couple off Germans, and a pair of Irish sisters, who were obviously pikies, their stuff was plastered over the floor, the place stunk, pizza boxes/McDonalds wrappers, empty goon bags all over. We started to unpack a bit then all of a sudden a cockroach walks across the walls, luckily the Irish were there to splatter it, only think they were good for. We quit the unpacking and got down to the bar, soon to be approached by a group of fairly older Australian men who we quickly discovered were just as rude and sarcastic as the other Australian men we've come across, we ended up stuck with them, reluctant to leave because we were waiting for the bikini contest, yes that's right we didn't enter, there was a temptation too as the winner got $1000 and the town did feel like a Kavos sort of place (minus the smell of sweating vomit in the gutters, urgh!), normally I would be tipsy by this time of day and would probably naively enter but not enough rum and coke yet, although the Australians were helping me with that. I let them, it's £6-7 English pounds for one little half cup drink in this country, probably going to be more in the big cities further south. Now you understand the need to goon. The bikini competition went on for much longer then it needed too. There wasn't much talent but it was funny, just drunk girls, dancing and prancing about, then the last contestant was a guy dressed in a bikini, there's always one. We got out of the awkward conversations with the Ozzies, got showered and met up with the Danishes, played the usual card games before we headed into town, bit of a blur from that point, went to a few bars, scouted the nightlife a bit, defiantly liked it there, possible town to work in for a few months, if/when I come back next October (already planning my return, got a lot of thinking to do, gulp). The next day, the goon hangover was at its worse, we needed food, quick! Found a gorgeous little outside cafe with cute umbrellas and pillows to rest on, felt like a cute Italian place. I choose eggs benedict, I miss poached eggs. it was the nicest thing I've had for a while. I took my time eating it, didn't want it to end. We let the grub settle and went on the hunt for the best but cheapest Whitsunday's trip, after realising they all leave on certain days, we had to sit down and work out a plan for the rest of our time in Australia, so many towns we want to visit and so little time we leave on the 7th January and were not even a quarter of a way down to Melbourne, where we finish. Anyway we booked a trip to leave in 2 days so we had a bit of time to enjoy Airlie Beach now. We went wanted to get down to some water and shrivel off the hangover in the sun, soon saw there was no stinger nets so couldn't get in, didn't fancy getting stung by a deadly box jellyfish. We went to the Lagoon instead, it's really good that towns have that option too. The night time was soon here, got new bags of cheap end of the line wine, the normal pre going out routine occurred and the night quickly blurred. We then had a couple of days of the same kind of thing, one of the days I went out on a scooter on a mini road trip for the afternoon, we went up into the hills and found a little look out over a harbour, could see for miles, loads of little coves and different boats, a few private beaches. It was so pretty and peaceful. The next day was Whitsunday's trip day, we set off on a 7am early start to get a full day on the boat, the trip was two nights and three days, we sailed to Whitehaven beach, it was like nothing I've ever seen before with other beaches, there were different colour shade in swirls all round the sea bed, it's from natural cracks I'm the earth, was truly amazing, we went on a very long sweaty walk in the 'island bush' to get up to a look out point called Hill Inlet and took some cool photos of it, I'll upload some on here. Hopefully I'll get to a proper Internet cafe soon to upload my Fiji and Australian photos onto snapfish, we have a busy few days coming up so I'll try get it done as soon as. Anyway back to Whitehaven; it was obviously insisted that we wear stinger suits but luckily everyone on the bay was, had a little mess around photo shoot and swam around looking for fish, we thought we saw a reef shark once but it was just a huge fish. Soon to be back on the boat we sailed to a little cove where we was going to spend the night, this is when we properly started talking to the people on our boat, there was 21 of us plus 2 staff or skippers as they're called apparently. Defiantly a few characters to deal with, a French dude who was the craziest, most mood changing person I have met in my life, one minute he was screaming and dancing like a chicken then he would just sit by himself and look out to the water - one of my favs. An interesting German couple that we nicknamed the cheerleader and the jock just because they looked like the typical kind (she was a massive diva though, moaned about her bed, first in the lunch line, just rude and selfish), a lovely girl from Canada that were meeting in the next few towns and probably with at Christmas, then there was Luciano who had the biggest hairiest beard but the most loveliest Italian (he had the hardest drinking games to understand when we were drunk), just really good people that wanted to make friends and make the most of the experience. The staff on the other hand was nice one minute and so negative about everything the next, I got on okay with them both when it was just us but not sure anyone else did much, it seemed the captain took a liking to me, he shared he's smokes with me each day, offered me a free trip next time and offered to employee me next summer - for some reason, 3 days was enough with this guy. For example, the skipper gave us some bread to give to the fish so there we were happily feeding away and the captain went crazy and gave us a right lecture about how it would kill them, how are we meant to know?.. They just had some rude sarcastic side to them all the time. I wanted to spend some time alone on the boat so I missed a couple of the stop off points and just sunbathed and read my book. I can now announce I have read my first trilogy, yes it is 50 shades BUT its a start, I have now obtained a paper book so that's next on my list. We were so shocked about how many jellyfish were in the sea, they were all washing up on the shore and could be seen floating around the boats, there are 400+ types of jellyfish but only a few are deadly, they scared us enough to religiously wear our sexy stinger suits. This gives me a further excuse to not be tanned, I have for sure hit a tanning wall.. Just don't seem to be changing colour and the tan lines seem none existent. The first night on the boat was fun, all came together on the top deck playing drinking games and drinking goon, so weird just blaring out music and staring into darkness, hearing the odd flurry of fish jumping out the water, after a few games of the classic 'never have I ever', we retired to our bed, which in the daytime was actually used as the dinner serving table, it was another night of 3 in the bed. The next day, after a ridiculous 7am wake up call by the crew, they suddenly pounded music through the cabin and scared the hell out of us, definitely put the 3 girls from London in bad moods, grrr. After the budget cereal that was provided, settled in our stomachs, we went on the secluded beach by the cove that we had anchored up the night before, it wasn't the best beach and reef we had seen so I just sunbathed while the girls snorkelled, they were very brave too, the sea was crawling with jellies, apparently they were going in people's faces as they were swimming, yuk! There wasn't any shade though so by about 10am it was to much to lay in so we were trying to hide beside some big rocks, all fine until I felt a spider web on my leg, then Liv spotted a ginormous web so we pelted ourself to the waters edge hoping the crew would spot us and speed boat over to pick us up. Later that day they took us to a random raised patch of sand in the sea, so bazaar, it was just a mound of sand in the middle of the ocean. Later we anchored up by another cove and started drinking early, by 8pm the rum had run out and random bags of the goons were being passed around, played loads of different drinking games, turned the music up and all dancing crazily on deck. No idea how no one fell in, looking back on it, does seem pretty dangerous, all jumping around on the smallest deck area. Ah well we lived to tell the tale. No one remembers going to bed or how the night ended but those are the effects of a good night. Surprisingly no hangover again, I think its something to do with the boat because I haven't been hungover either days, wahoo! We soon sailed back, the winds were so strong and the captain wanted to make the most of it so up went the sails and the boat quickly tilted, it tilted to such an angle that we were laying on deck with our legs facing the water and holding onto whatever we could, felt like we were nearly standing on the water, the water was splashing up the deck so we all had to sit on the highest side, #terrifying! Wow, was it nice to be back on land but our heads were all still swaying and we couldn't get rid of that feeling all day, apparently it's called vertigo or some thing. We didn't have a hostel to go back to as we were leaving Airlie that night, luckily our lovely Canadian friend, Christa said we could use her room to sort ourselves out. Finally I 'hit the showers' and spent a very long time shampooing my locks as we hadn't showered in 3 days, they don't have showers on the boat, just a hose in the toilets that you can have one minute spray downs with but it was hardly clean, showering in a miniature toilet cubicle.
After getting ready and repacking our bags ready to leave, we headed out for dinner and decided that the four of us would treat ourselves to a nice dinner (after living on the boat food), so we went to an indian restaurant we had eyed up a few days before and had a lovely curry. That night the boat crew had arranged a reunion night at one of the bars, even though we had only been away from everyone for a few hours it was really nice to see everyone in (semi) clean clothes, all showered and girls with make up on - although we do all feel like drag queens with make up on now, I wonder what it'll be like when I'm home as I kinda prefer myself with no make up now. Lots of free beer jugs were given to us which was cool, we all had a chat about where everybody is going next, most people heading south same as us, found that a few people were going to Agnes Water, which was where we were heading next, we swapped numbers and planned to meet. All downed our drinks, had our final dance, said our goodbyes.. It was time for us three to leave for the dreaded midnight 10 hours overnight bus. See you in Agnes Water and the town of 1770.