New tour started on Wednesday. 33 of us on it!!! Have been used to 5-8 people, now we have 2 bus loads! Spent the first night on Magnetic Island. It was a 3 hour drive and half hour ferry ride to get there. We were to do a small hike to a lookout point then return to the hostel to watch the amazing sunset .... hmm! It chucked it down! I decided against the hike preferring to do a run. For once the conditions were near perfect, a light drizzle and really quite cool. I could see a hill and got quite excited at having a good run. I set off at 4 intending to do about 45 minutes, as I am only doing 30 minute runs at the moment so this would be a good challenge. Well, needless to say I got lost.... and it was brilliant. I took the hiking path up to a look out point and then quite literally, it was all down hill from there. Two hours later I found the hostel just. By now it was really chucking it down and the beautiful sunset was duely cancelled. However,I had a great night catching up with Megan and Tales from the first leg of my Africa tour. They live in Townsville the town on the mainland from Magnetic Island and braved the appauling conditions to come and have a beer with me and show me 'the coffee table photo album' which was really brilliant.

Not much sleep that night due to the party in the bar and then the fallout from the hammered party goers. As usual we had an early start in the morning so no partying for us. We made our way down to Airlie Beach where we boarded a 84ft ocean going yacht called British Defender for the start of a two night 3 day sailing of the Whitsundays. Anyone who knows me will know how much I was looking forward to this part of my great adventure ....not! There were 28 of us on our boat and once we were all aboard we started out just as the rain start down! Then the rain got harder and harder and harder. It was everything I hate about sailing only worse because I was hoping that at least the weather would have been good. We all borrowed yellow macintoshes and sat on the high side of the boat with our legs over the side as we sped along with the boat on its side. Great : Anyway we made it to a cove called Nara Inlet which was sheltered and the rain stopped and we settled for the night. The next morning it was overcast but amazingly the sun burst through and we had a fantastic morning sailing over to Tongue Bay where we walked to an outlook and bathed on the beautiful white sandy beach. We wore stinger suits in the sea because of a nasty little jelly like fish that you cant see that can cause you much pain, but it was worth going in because there were many sting rays gliding around us, just out of reach. Amazing to watch and quite safe.

Back on the boat we sailed to Whitehaven Beach were I went for a scuba dive ... yey!!! It was good to dive again as I was beginning to worry if I would remember anything. The visability wasn't very good but the corals were amazing and we saw some lovely fish.

Today we sailed back to Airlie Beach in superb conditions, racing the rest of our tour group who were sailing on Boomerang. We were keeled right over and I even had a go at winching the sails. We all thoroughly enjoyed it. Once the weather was kind the trip was brilliant. This last few days have been the highlight of Australia so far for me. Tomorrow we have another early start as we have an eight hour drive to Carnarvon Gorge where we will then spend a whole day hiking.