Just arrived back from the most amazing sailing trip on the Whitsunday Islands off Airlie Beach!! We spend three days and two nights on an ex-racing maxi yacht called Broomstick and visited some of the most beautiful spots of our trip so far. We left Airlie Beach on Saturday morning and spent three days sailing, snorkelling and generally having lots of fun. The snorkelling was brilliant lots of beautiful fish and coral. The best stop off on the trip was a place called Whitehaven Beach which you will see from the pictures is just out of this world! The water is shallow and there are sand bars running through it which are formed by an underwater volcano. The beach is also formed from silica which is produced by the volcano and solidifies as it reaches the surface. The beach was about 90% silica we were told by our friendly crew which made for a beach which felt more like cotton wool or talcum powder. We spent an couple of hours soaking it up and also saw a sand shark right next to us in the water - Jon thought chasing it was a good idea!

The food was good on the boat and the sunsets were just perfect, so all in all it was pretty damn good.The sailing on the way back to the port was the best, sailing at about 15 notts and with a massive tilt on the boat which certainly made the adrenaline pump.

You won't be able to get the full picture of theplace unless you look at the photos and we are still picking our chins off the floor at some of the sights. I am pretty sure we will never see anywhere more beautiful and preserved for a very long time to come!

Today is Hans (from Sweden)'s birthday so we have just had dinner and are off to a bar to meet up with the other people from our Whitsunday sailing trip. We are thinking the 7:45am bus pick up may be a toughy tomorrow but that's pretty much a lie in compare to the last couple of weeks!!

On to Townsville for Magnetic Island tomorrow and then Mission Beach and Cairns. can't believe we only have a week left in Australia but we have certainly made some fantastic memories to take with us and keep forever.

Looking forward to hearing all your news from home,

lots of love xxxx

PS Look out for a video of Jon standing in, breaking and falling out of a tree. We were taking a group photo on Whitehaven beach and Hans accidently had his camera on video but fortunately managed to capture one of the funniest moments yet!!! Hopefully it will upload ok!