Well its one of the most famous "must do's" when travelling Australia and I had been dying to do it from the start but had saved it for one of my last major activities in Oz. Airlie Beach itself was actually a lot nicer than I imagined! The sun was shining, the sea was glistening, there is a massive waterfront lagoon (as stingers prevent you from going in the actual sea) and it seemed like a nice small resort town. We were booked into Airlie Waterfront Resort and Backpackers and were kindly upgraded from our 17 bed dorm (haha Lorna had checked in before me and walked into it and said she felt like she was in orphanage!) to a 'ocean view' 8 bed dorm ensuite with only 2 others in. Result. The next morning we checked in for our boat and sorted our stuff out.

We had booked the notorious party boat the 'Atlantic Clipper' after rave reviews from everyone I met. And it was AMAZING. It is one of the biggest boats (there was 50 of us!) but it was a big boat with a massive upper deck area, a Jacuzzi spa (though it wasn't heated so we didn't use it as it was too chilly at night to get into a cold pool!), a waterslide, big saloon area inside and 3 bed rooms! Oh yeah and it boasted HOT, POWER showers, unlike the other boats! Woohoo.

The crew were awesome, the food was really good and we were lucky enough to get a fun group. Naturally as there was so many of us, you didn't end up taking to EVERYONE and smaller groups did form but everyone got on well, we played enough drinking games on deck and drank enough goon to hurt our poor livers even more (Lorna and I practically finished a whole box , our only box, accidently on the first night so had to scrounge more drink for the second night) but it was all good fun. On the second night it was the official party. The crew got involved, there was massive group games for prizes, music on the guitar with everyone singing their hearts out to classics like 'Wonderwall' and then we thought it was all over they brought up a box...of fancy dress clothes. So in the usual backpacker fashion it mainly consisted of the guys dressing up as girls and everyone was partying on the top deck. Such a good laugh.

First stop was of course to most famous beach in Australia and voted second best beach in the world...Whitehaven! And yes it was beautiful...White sand, turquoise clear waters and cool sand breaks. Though in all honestly I have been to so many incredible beaches now this didn't jump out at me as much as I thought it would. Then again you are so used to see the digitally enhanced version on postcards too and we didn't quite have crystal clear blue skies so it took the 'edge' of f it a bit...but don't get me wrong, it was still very beautiful. We didn't have long enough there really, that is probably my only complaint from the entire trip. By the time we had trekked through to the viewpoints etc we had only 90 mins there, but everyone messed around in the water and then laid down to soak up the surroundings. That's another thing, sometimes on these backpacker routes we are all so busy to get to these places and as some people 'tick' them off their lists...you forget to just take the few minutes to stand still and in silence and soak up how lucky you are to be there!

The rest of the two days we moored at spots to go snorkelling. They took us to two great sites. The first one had so many fish. Way more than we saw on the Great Barrier out of Cairns! It was fun. By this point Lorna was loving the snorkelling and we both ended up being the last ones in the water to make the most of our time. The crew also chucked in some fish food without you expecting it, then a million fish would come knocking you out of the way to grab the food. It was mad! I also did another dive he second day. The coral was absolutely incredible. I was swimming through caves and tunnels of 10m coral of all different colours and shapes, it was so good! I love diving!