And so once again someone sonewhere is keeping a fab eye on the weather on my behalf!

Despite cyclones, floods, closed roads and general carnage I made it on to the overnight bus and all the way to Airlie Beach in time to catch Condor, my yacht for a 2 day 2 night trip around the Whitsundays. Not only did I manage to catch it but managed to catch it on a beautiful hot and sunny afternoon completely unlike anything in the weather forecast! On our first afternoon we headed out of Airlie Beach to Blue Pearl Bay where we stopped off for some snorkelling and I managed to overcome my fear of being in the water and unable to breathe which I'm pretty proud of! It was absolutely beautiful snorkelling over the reef and we saw hundreds of gorgeous tropical fish and corals.

Then after another sail around the islands we stopped off for dinner - lovingly prepared by Tone and Spence the ship's crew and got an early night, ready for an early start the next day. Getting up at 5.30 was well worth it when, after an incredibly sweaty night crammed into tiny bunks, we came up on deck to be greeted by at least 5 huge sea turtles swimming around the boat munching on jellyfish! I was really upset not to have seen turtles on Fraser so this more than made up for missing out last week! Sadly we weren't snorkelling in that area so could only watch them from the boat before we headed off to Whitehaven Beach for some more swimming and jellyfish dodging in our incredibly unflattering stinger suits!

Then it was on again to another snorkelling bay where once again we saw no end of fish and corals including some massive fish who looked like they would have been very tasty on the bbq we had for dinner! Unfortunately after that the evening degenerated a bit as a few of my fellow passengers had far too much goon (evil cheap wine in a box) and started trying to pick fights with each other until about 4am... So after a very sleepless night we made our leisurely way back to Airlie Beach for a well deserved shower and sleep!

I still can't believe how lucky we were with the weather - it only rained at night and first thing in the morning when a week ago the whole area was being destroyed by a cyclone and none of the boats were even going out! Hopefully it'll hold out for my final week - I can't believe I'm flying home a week today!