Next up on the agenda was the Whitsunday cruise, a two night boat ride to see one of the nicest beachest in the world: Whitehaven beach, with some snorkelling and sailing thrown in too. Cos I'm a crazy kid, I'd opted for the Tongarra boat, known as a party boat where the crew try and get you wasted the entire time. If there's anything I've learned from travelling so far it's that these 'drunken westerners ruining the peace and calm of stunning natural locations' trips are always the best. Don't knock them till you try them and all that. To be fair to this boat though, it was only a fraction as crazy as the Halong Bay cruise (nobody was naked!), and the best bit of the trip was by far the snorkelling, it was awesome.

So I met up with Linda who I was with in Fraser that morning where she'd already gathered a bunch of Swiss and German people who were going to be on our boat too. I panicked a bit at this, there was no way I was gonna be sitting in silence while everyone else joked in German again! But luckily these were much more polite German speakers, plus as soon as we got on the boat the crew established the main rule of the trip: no speaking any other language apart from English or you have to do a vegemite shot. Thank god for that. Wish the Fraser tour had done the same!

So the first day was mainly spent getting as close to Whitehaven beach as we could so we could explore it the next morning. The sky was grey, the sea was crazy, and it was freezing... so there was nothing for it but to get straight onto the goon! We played some drinking games and slipped around the deck in the pelting rain for a bit, seeing who could stand up for longest. We had some delicious dinner cooked by the deck hand Greg, who got really annoyed when someone stole his sausage. They'd provided us with some fashionable yellow fisherman's jackets so it wasn't too cold (especially with goon jackets too) so I think the weather actually made the night, storms are the best. One of the main reasons I chose this boat was cos you can sleep out on the deck under the stars. Obviously this wouldn't be ideal in the pouring rain, but the crew pulled out a tarp and I actually got a really nice and warm night's sleep in the open air.

The next day it was whitehaven beach time. The sky was still really grey and despite the lovely white silica sand (the finest in the world) the beach didn't look too amazing. Oh well, we entertained ourselves brushing our teeth with sand, licking the butts of lime ants, going wildlife spotting and climbing to the mountain viewpoint. Probably would have been better with sunshine but ah well. Captain Binkie then took a million different photos of us on the beach including a human pyramid, sitting in the (freezing) ocean, spelling out Tongarra, and pretending to be naked behind the Whitehaven sign. As luck would have it, the sun came out as soon as we left the beach and we spent the rest of the afternoon sunbathing on the deck on the way to the snorkelling site.

We were doing the snorkelling at Manta Ray bay, where it definitely lived up to its name, when we saw no less than eight massive manta rays swimming on the surface as soon as we got there! The captain said he'd never seen that many at the same time before in 7 years on the job. Seeing as they weren't going anywhere we got our snorkels on and jumped in with them. The rest of the group stuck together and didn't actually see the rays in the water but I wandered off and got within touching distance of four different rays, they're awesome. I went underwater at one point to see what looked like a snorkel mask coming towards me... turned out to be the mouth of a massive ray which I almost crashed into, freaked out a bit there, but then swam alongside it for a few minutes. I think they're my new favourite sea animals. Definitely one of the highlights of my travels, so lucky :D

After that we went to the bay we were actually supposed to be snorkelling in and Greg threw some food into the water so that we were totally surrounded by multicoloured fish, crashing into our masks and everything, amazing. Saw some pretty cool bright blue coral and some nice parrotfish before the cold got a bit much. So yeah despite having done four discovery dives I saw way more in a day's snorkelling than I have before!

That night was the real party night and Greg soon turned up dressed in a skirt to assign us some team games, all of which are a bit of a blur. I remember passing an onion from mouth to mouth as well as the longest arm wrestle ever.... our team won anyway, wahey! The goon was all put into a bucket to make punch which was way too nice tasting and ended up with me remembering very little of the night... oops.

To get rid of our hangover the next day we did a spot more snorkelling, which wasn't quite as good as the first time but I had fun chasing a parrotfish around for a while anyway. Then it was time to head back to Airlie beach and to say goodbye to the Tongarra. Sad times, I loved the boat. We had an afterparty afterwards with the Swiss and German lot as well as a few others, but called it a night pretty early seeing as we were all pretty shattered. Spent the next morning exploring Airlie a bit, admiring the lagoon which would be a lot nicer in the sun and trying to sort out my bank card which had decided to block me. So many money dramas in Oz! Then hopped onto the Oz experience bus to Magnetic island with a crazy bus driver called beaver, as well as the english/scottish girls I met in Byron and Ali and Finlay from Kroombit. Stopped at a few more 'big things' then hopped onto the ferry to the island for more beachy adventures, coming soon!