So cyclone Ului had passed and we flew to Airlie Beach. Surprisingly there wasn't too much damage, a few yachts had broken their moorings and smashed into the rocks, palm tree's were missing a few palms and the power had been restored within a days. Our main reason for coming to Airlie Beach was to get out onto the water and visit the Whitsunday Islands and the Great Barrier Reef. There are loads of different boat trips you can take from Airlie Beach ranging from day trips to 5 nights out on the water, with neither of us being too keen on spending the night on a boat we decided to do two day trips. The first trip took us out from Shute Harbour in Airlie Beach to Hamilton Island in the Whitsundays, on a high speed catamaran. We had 3 hours on Hamilton to spend as we wish. Having already been to this island in March we already knew what we wanted to do and head straight down to the massive pool area for some swimming and sunbathing, although we did allow enough time to visit the bakery and pick up a steak pie for Phil and a chocolate donut for Rhi! A BBQ lunch was then served onboard the catamaran whilst we made our way over to Whitsunday Island and the fabulous Whitehaven Beach. The journey over took about an hour but it was well worth it. Whitsunday Island is the largest island in the Whitsunday group and is a completely uninhabited. Whitehaven beach is 7km of 99.8% pure white silica sand. It was beyond beautiful and potentially the best beach we have ever visited, and we have been to a lot of beaches lately! As Whitsunday island is an uninhabited national park, there isn't a lot to do there, so we just did a bit of sunbathing, went paddling in the sea, played a spot of beach cricket and just soaked up our surroundings. We had around 4 hours to spend on Whitehaven beach before making the journey back to Shute Harbour in the evening. The next day was our trip out to the Great Barrier Reef to spend the day on a pontoon. Again we left from Shute Harbour on a catamaran and went via Hamilton Island to pick up more passengers. This journey was slightly different however as it involved sailing outside of the sheltered waters of the Whitsundays through open water all the way to the reef. All I'm going to say about the journey is that we both felt very very very sea sick the whole way out. But as soon as we arrived at the pontoon we completely forgot about the journey as the views of the reef were amazing. The Great Barrier Reef is 2300km in length and 80km at its broadest and is made up of 2900 individual reefs, the one we were visiting was Hardy Reef. There are lots of activities available on the pontoon, but we headed straight for some snorkelling. As there are lots of very dangerous jellyfish in the coral sea during the summer months it was necessary for us to wear some rather attractive stinger suits, we have provided some photo's in the album for you to see (no comments please!) It was amazing to see all the different types of coral and fish, we even managed to spot some clown fish (nemo's)! We also took a trip on a semi-submersible which gave us a good idea of the depth of the reef wall and let us see even more coral. Again we had about 4 hours out at the reef before making the journey back to Airlie Beach, luckily it wasn't as bad on the way back. We really enjoyed our two trips, and being lucky enough to snorkel on the Great Barrier Reef is something we will never forget.