We had heard rumours that the weather wasn't too good further north, but hoped it would improve. Sadly it didn't and we had a couple of cloudy days with patchy rain for our Whitsundays trip. We booked on a boat named Samurai which was a 2 night 3 day sailing trip around the Whitsunday Islands. There were 24 other backpackers on board and 3 crew members. Despite the weather the trip was awesome. On the first day we sailed to the largest Island, Whitsunday Island and went to Whitehaven beach where there is the purest sand in the world. Apparantly people clean their teeth using the sand. We didn't try this. On the way to the beach we had to walk through rainforest, there were so many insects we got bitten alive. We also tasted tree ants by licking their bum. Matt, one of the crew, had told us they taste like sherbet and he was right! It made your tongue fizz so much! When we reached the beach the sand was the whitest we had seen, it was gorgeous. The water was clear even though it was a cloudy day, you could see stingrays and baby reef sharks swimming through it. We had the whole afternoon at the beach and fell asleep, to recover from our night bus the previous night; Rachel getting some funny sunglasses marks. We sailed to a different cove in the evening and moored up in a cove where there were lots of big fish swimming around the boat and had dinner. The food on the trip was amazing, lots of it and proper healthy meals! Something we hadn't seen in a while!

The second day we snorkeled around the fringing reef in Luncheon Bay, we managed to see lots of pretty fish. We then had our free scuba dive which was great! We both really liked it, so will do our padi course in Thailand. We then went to another part of the reef to snorkel in the afternoon, where we saw a sting ray on the bottom of the ocean floor. On our second night, it rained quite heavily so everyone went to bed fairly early. Our bed was at the front of the boat and quite roomy, although so hot! That was one good thing about the weather, the temperature at night would have been unbearable if it was any hotter during the day. That evening we spoke to an Italian guy who had worked in a lot of places throughout Europe before coming to Oz. Later that evening there was dolphins around the boat, we found the next morning that they must have been chasing squid as there was squid ink all over the side of the boat!

On our last day we went to another island where there was a sand spit. The area is known for being home to lots of turtles, we weren't in the water long when we swam straight in to one. We followed it for a couple of minutes before it swam off. The visibility wasn't as good in this location though, probably because of the heavy rain over night so we didn't snorkel for too much longer. We then took a walk over the sand spit to the other island before boarding the boat. There was quite a bit of wind on our way back to Airlie Beach so we sailed back, picking up quite a bit of speed and the boat leaned right over which was cool.

That night Rick, the skipper, had organised a night out for everyone. It was at Phoenix bar in the town where we got free pizza and cheap drinks. We took advantage of the drinks and got wasted with everyone. It was a really good evening! Lots of fun!!

Typically when we woke up the next day the weather was sunny! We had a night bus in the evening so met Jen and Tasha, who were on our sailing trip by the Lagoon in town. It was gorgeous weather and we sunbathed for most of the day. Most big towns further north have man-made lagoons and beaches because the sea is too dangerous to go in, with stingrays and jelly fish! Later Ciaran and Tony met us and we all went for a dinner to cure the hangovers. We were on Castaway with Ciaran and Tony and Tasha and Jen had met them previously on Fraser Island, it is weird how everyone knows everyone! But it is nice to meet a great group of people!