The Wet Whitsundays!

Day 1 - A 4am start kicked off my east coast trip. 2 planes, 1 bus and 11hours later I arrived at Airlie Beach. Luckily flood waters had receded and I didnt see any crocs wandering down the road... It was quite a nice day when I arrived, so I checked into my hostel, confirmed my tour for Sat-Mon, got a smoothie, sat by the beach to drink it, then went back to the hostel to have a beer! It was early to bed for me though as I was shattered with being up so early. I heard the rain start at about 9pm and the feeling of dread started!!

Day 2 - MONSOON!!! Woke up to torrential rain. I debated not going! But Id paid my money, I was taking my chance. Plus Id been told that the deluges of rain didnt normally last for long and then cleared up..... Hmmmm.... I donned my attractive poncho and headed off to "Camira" for the day. All I can say is thank god I took sea sick pills!! It was pretty rough when we got out to open sea, they knocked me out for a couple of hours but it was ok. Few times I thought the catamaran was airborne! But we made it to our snorkling point ok after about 4 hours. We all got into a rubber dinghy and headed over to the island where we would go out from. The crew had run through some signals with us before we went out such as the "Im ok" "pick up" and "im drowning!" signals lol. I was happily (well, as could be in torrential, hard rain that hurt when it hit you) swimming along, saw a turtle, a few blue fish, and some other interesting things (not as good as Egypt, but weather didnt help) and then I came face to face with a jelly fish. I totally panicked, I hate them!! I tried to swim away asap, then my snorkle filled up with water, so I was trying to swim away, empty out my snorkle, not stand on the coral, stay afloat and ontop of that, one of the crew must have thought I was drowning, gave me the "are you ok?" signal, the reply is a hand on your head, so Im trying to do all that at the same time, I think I was nearly drowning!! Bee lined it back to shore after another jellyfish hit my hand, I swear I was faster than any fish! At this point the rain had become unbelievable, and we all headed back onto the boat where the free bar was now open and we made full use of it while the crew bbq'd our lunch in the wet out the back! A few drinking games filled the time while we headed back to our drop off point, long island. We (me and two girls Id made friends with, Lisa and Lindsey), were meant to stay on this island for 2 nites... Well, I think we were about the only people there!! I couldnt get into my room, lock was broken, and after the second key didnt work I wasnt going back over to reception in the rain, so I just slept in Lisa's room. We had a fun Sat nite watching Stuart Little and an early nite in our damp rooms.

Day 3 - Next morning we hoped it would improve but it was worse, the paths were up to our ankles, there were wild wallabes hopping around, snakes in the water and I would not have been at all surprised to see a croc wander by. We decided this was not our idea of fun and forfeited our second nites accommodation just to get off the island!! Back to beaches we went and we were never so glad to see civilisation and air con!! We washed all our maky clothes and set to work in the bar. We'd added two more to our group, our roommates Ben and Ryan from the midlands, so we got stuck into the beers at the hostel, then headed onto a club called the Phoenix where we cracked out the sparkling wine!! McDonalds was hit at 12 and then it was bedtime. Sore heads all round the next morning!! Lisa and I had been home first sensibly (ish!) and the others rolled in after 2 so they were worse for wear. I, Lisa and Lindsey checked out at 10, left our bags in the room, went and got subways for everyone and we just stayed in the room all day watching dvds and tv, nursing our hangovers and chilling out. Lindsey managed to confuse the cleaner who came in with me, asking why I was rearranging the furniture, think the cleaner thought we were mad!! At 7.30pm I said goodbye to them all sadly, and headed off out of Airlie southbound for Hervey Bay, overnight 12hour bus, this would be fun...