It’s been a little while hasn’t it!!! So let’s get on it…..

Straight after new year we were on our little road trip, we clocked up a tidy 3,500 km in just over 2 weeks, how hardcore are we?? First stop Airlee Beach, the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands; when you imagine backpackers, everyone automatically thinks lazy ex student bums hanging around drinking, partying and generally doing nothing, well Airlee is the queen of all travelling destinations. There are bars everywhere, everyone’s a backpacker, and everyone wants to drink! So we thought, to hell with it lets join em???? We had a great night out, as you can see from the photo’s, ending up in McDonalds, no kebabs here I’m afraid! We do have a little confession about our little drunken escapade. Un-beknown to Chris, while Gem was at the bar buying the bargain basement jugs of sangria on special ($9 a jug!) she bought tickets to the Magnums foam party...oh dear!! You know that the evening has gone rapidly downhill when u go to a foam party...cheese me up baby!! Luckily we managed to leave unscathed, with only little damage to our pride! It was even worse than the old Prague Junction foam parties...if u can beleive that!!!!

It was from here we booked a trip out to the Whitsunday Islands for 2 nights on board a huge sailing boat called the Atlantic Clipper, we had our own cabin n stuff. It was absolutely awesome. We met some really cool people, loads of really cool English people, from Essex (innit!!), London and some Brummies who we named the ‘Duuudleys’! There were French, people from Israel, Norway, Ireland, and everyone got on really well - 33 of us in all. The first night was a heavy one, and cos we were one of the only couples who were backpacking rather than on holiday, people kept shouting us drinks and telling us to save our money!! So there were no complaints from us! Everyone was up until around half 1 ish, but we weren’t told that we were going to be woken up at 5am cos of the motor on the boat, and then at 6am for breakfast! By 8 o’clock we were on Whitehaven Beach, it’s one of the top ten beaches in the world! But…..there’s a huge but…cos its stinger season you have to wear the bloody stupid stinger suits, which as you can see are HUGELY flattering! So when its boiling hot you have to suit up and jump in, you know, just in case you DIE!!!

After spending a few hours on the beach we head off to our second place where we do some diving, there weren’t so many fishes as we thought, just a puffer fish and a huge bump headed parrot fish, but there were vast amounts of different corals, all different colours, blues and reds. It was awesome! We then went off to our final mooring out from a bay, where we would spend the night, where as the sun was setting there were dolphins about 100m from the boat. There were about 3 or 4 of them making lots of noise!

We arrived back onto Airlee Beach on the Monday (8th) at about 1ish, and we set off for a drive north to Mission Beach, where we arrived around 7.30pm. We had phoned the hostel in Mission Beach from Airlee and also booked White Water Rafting to do on the Tues. So on the Tues we were up bright and early around 6 ish to head to the Tully River (about a 40 minute drive). We did some awesome rafting, we didn’t take a camera for obvious reasons, but we got some printed off from the photographer they had there, so I’ve tried to take a photo from them but they haven’t come out very well, but just to give u an idea of what we looked like!!! Loads of people fell out, and they made us do some really hairy things. At one point they made us all hop out the raft and just float through the rapids, we got to jump of a 3 metre rock into the river which Chris had to front flip off! The rapids were really quite fast flowing; at one point the old American dude sat in the front with Chris fell out the raft and was dragged for about 100m before anyone even managed to help him get back on! He was about 60, and we were quite surprised he didn’t have a heart attack! Earlier on that day, he was getting thrown about quite a bit and he almost knocked Chris out??? But luckily Chris had his foot wedged in and Gem grabbed hold of him……eventually, but Chris didn’t look very impressed. That’s probably the reason Chris didn’t try and help the American out of the water when he fell in….it was payback!!!!

It was an awesome day, one not to be forgotten in a hurry. We didn’t stay in Mission Beach any longer than needed for the rafting, as mission Beach itself was really quite quiet so we headed up to a place just north of Cairns, called Port Douglas. This was another 3 hours or so drive and at times the Captain Cook highway hugs the coastline winding as you travel. The scenery up this far north of Australia is so different from where we were staying in Yeppoon. There’s rainforest everywhere, huge lakes with croc’s, it rains a lot and it’s very humid - you get out the shower and your still hot! But its such a beautiful place. After a night in Port we went to meet more of Chris’ rellies who live half hour further north…but that’s a whole other story……!!!