We arrived in Airlie Beach from Hervey Bay and had a few hours to kill before we were to board our boat for the next two days, we had heard the weather had been pretty crap and had our fingers crossed for some sun. We got ourselves some food and alcohol (for the next few days) and it was time to board the boat. There were 18 of us on our boat, a Norwegian family, quite a few English and some more Brazilians, we all had our introduction meeting with Nick (the skipper), Alicia (the dive instructor) and Lou (the hostess). The introduction meeting consisted of being told what we can not do whilst aboard the boat this seems to be a very Aussie thing to do lots and lots of rules for everything all with a hefty fine attached! After all the rules (about an hour later) we were shown to our cabin, we were very lucky to get an air conditioned double cabin whilst a lot of the others had to share the dining area which converted in to a bed on the evening. Although to get to our bed we had to climb over a Norwegian couple but we were happy to have air con and a nice comfy bed!
We set off on the boat and Lou prepared some food whilst we all sat around relaxing. in the afternoon Alicia took a few of us diving whilst some people went snorkeling on the Great barrier Reef. We decided to do a dive, it was quite murky with approx 10m visibility but was still excellent with tons of clown fish and we got to meet priscella who was a large fish that we cant remember the name of, but she was huge anyway! After diving and snorkeling we attempted to get a 1 minute shower (which can be done) and then got ourselves some beer and chilled out on the deck eating nice food (courtesy of Lou) watching the sunset! The rest of the evening involved drinking, eating BBQ and sitting out on the deck watching the shooting stars and relaxing again! A brilliant start to the Whitsundays!
The next morning we woke up and we were already moving towards another dive site. In the morning we went snorkeling and in the afternoon we went to Whitehaven beach where we walked up to a viewing point and it was absolutely stunning the water was crystal clear with bright blue and green patches everywhere, we could also see stingrays swimming around below us. We spent about a few hours on the beach sunbathing, relaxing, Ben played football and we went swimming in the water. Swimming in the water is a bit annoying though as you have to wear a stinger suit! The sand on the beach is very fine, it feels like flour and doesnt get hot even though it was boiling. After an afternoon on the beach it was back to the boat to do a bit of turtle spotting, where we saw quite a few bobbing about on the surface! The next stop was about a two hour boat ride around some of the Whitsunday islands and the water was a bit rough and therfore there were 18 passengers laid out all around the boat pretending to be tired but blatantly felt sick and were concentrating on not throwing up! On the evening more delicious food was preapred by Lou and we relaxed for the evening on the deck, no one ate as much food this time, i wonder why?!
the next morning we were woken up at ridiculous o'clock to go snorkeling and were slightly annoyed when there wasnt really very much to see! We headed back to the boat for some breaky and spent the rest of the journey back to Airlie Beach relaxing on the boat and making the most of having everything done for us! We really enjoyed the Whitsunday's by far this is one of the highlights of Australia!
On the evening we checked in to the Koala Bungalows in Airlie Beach for the night, we have been really disappointed with the standard of hostels in Oz and this was another one that was quite pricey for a dingy dorm bed with a crappy bathroom and you have to pay extra for your bleeding linen ggrrrrr! Anyway we headed out on the evening to meet up with everyone off our boat for a few drinks and ended up playing some Norwegian drinking games, got pretty drunk and headed off to a few bars for the night!
Next stop Magnetic Island!