Whitsunday Trip - Day 1
Thursday 11th February

Thursday morning we woke up and met up with Yael in reception to get some alcohol to take on our boat - Powerplay - and to get some breakfast. We said goodbye to Vicky, Dave and Julia until we return to Airlie beach Saturday, and had another girl from Wales called Danielle join us. We chose to have breakfast down at a lovely placed called 'Bohemia Raw' next to the harbour. They sold unique handcrafted Jewllery and had books about compassion, gratitude and mindfulness which I flicked through whilst enjoying my chocolate milkshake and cottage cheese type toastie. The four of us walked to our boat which was admittedly smaller than we expected and met some others (inc Kara, Kayleigh, Andy, a guy from Brazil who's name I can't pronounce).

After a safety briefing from Polly our new tour guide, we all got on the boat which was quite like a catamaran. An hour of relaxing and chatting to one another I met two couples called Claude and Andie then also Joe and Camilla, there was a guy from Cheltenham called Joe who was a character, Ann, Matt, and then two guys who we'd met the night before who are also friends with Julia called Dez and Koen. Everyone was really friendly, we stopped off at a place to snorkel called Blue Pearl Bay while others went scuba diving. All wet-suited up and looking like Scooba Steve from Big daddy, we got taken out in a little boat to the sea and used a noodle to float while we looked at some of the fish. We saw a few different types and not long after a few of us got back into the boat after freaking out about the jelly fish (I'd rather see a shark than a jelly...) While I was there a beautiful rainbow fish came up to the boat, Captain Moxy told us it was a Parrot fish which I've now decided is my fave sea creature.

We made it back to Powerplay and had dinner cooked up by Polly (who we also called 'mum') and Moxy. For the first time ever on a trip there was a nice variety of food which I ate sat at the back of the boat looking over the fish in the water lit up by the rear boat lights. I felt very lucky to be there and detached from any worries or stress. We then endured another long briefing this time from our captain Moxy (who was pretty comical a 24 year old who had been raised on a boat with his 3 older brothers) on what was going to happen the following day and a bit about the fish and the islands. After the briefing we were all a bit tired but I joined in drinking and card games teaching people how to play ring of fire. Everyone was fairly well behaved as in not really drunk apart from Joe who was completely wasted. I went to bed about half 11 feeling really tired from the eventful day and left everyone else to it.

xxx