We arrived at Airlie Beach at 11am after a 13 hour overnight bus journey from Hervey Bay. It actually went suprisingly quick and we both managed to get our heads down for abit. We checked into our hostel in the afternoon after having a little look around and checking in for our boat trip the next day. When we got to our room we thought we were in luck as there was a cable tv and much needed air con. We had an early night as we were up very early the next day for the boat to the whitsundays. After a few hours sleep i woke up and heard something rustling and looked in the direction of where it was coming from to notice something big and black moving up the wall, it was too big to be a gecko i thought so i woke caz up to have a look. We turned the light on and it was a bloody rat!!!! So we shooedit off and waited abit to see if it returned....it didnt so we nodded back off on the top bunk thinking we were safe. A few hours later after that i nearly had a heart attack! I found myself on the bedroom floor in a daze and couldnt process what was going on....turns out the rat was back and in bed with us....even worse in caz's hair!!!! She had screamed that loud and woke me so bad that i basically did a leap off the bed and landed on my feet still 3/4 asleep not knowing what the hell was going on except that caz was going nuts over something and screaming RAT, RAT, RAT! After we both calmed down we went to reception to try and change rooms but turns out reception in not 24hrs and there was nowt we could do. I eventually went back to sleep because nothing stops my sleep but Caz was obviously traumatised and sat in the middle of the room on a chair like a mad old woman on "rat watch" until the sun came up and i managed to convince her to get some sleep before our trip. So we checked out very angrily and demanded to speak to the manager.....but manager doesnt work sundays sorry! PATHETIC!

All moods well we checked in for out boat at the marina and hopped aboard the ex-racing sailing maxi boat "matador". We got out of the harbour, chucked the sail up and started cruising along at a 45 degree angle living the life.....until about 20 minutes into the journey theres a loud crack and the sail is in two! End of sailing for us and time to use the motor instead. Shortly after we stopped off at our 1st snorkelling site. i jumped in and waited for caz to jump in aswel so we could swim over to the reef and stay together but caz jumped in and freaked out a little bit because it was in the middle of the deep blue and if you looked down you couldnt see a foot in front on your face and we had been warned about deadly jellyfish and sharks etc. So we both jumped out and went for a ride in the small tender boat and had a drive of it whilst everyone else snorkelled. Soon after it started peeing it down and we were all drenched, freezing and waiting for a late tea before heading off to Hook Island Resort to go to sleep. But that was like guest house paradiso and is most definatley the worst place we have ever been!!!! There were horse flies like moses had sent them and it was filthy and smelly. Not to mention there was no air con and we are in the tropics??

The next day didnt get any better really....we were up at 4.45am ready to get back on the boat and head off for our days activities at whitehaven beach (the beautiful picture above) which is in the top 10 beaches of the world and the sand is 99 % silica. However when we got back on the boat for breakfast we noticed the crew messing about with the engine below deck and there was oil everywhere. Turns out that along with the sail the motor was alos now broke and we werent going anywhere so we were stranded on the hook island resort all day until they got it fixed.....but they didnt fix it so we spent the night there again which means in total 48 hours on a hell hole! with no drinking water may i add!!!! But we did manage to gain some fun out of it all by snorkelling at the resort with some friends which was really good because we saw lots of huge fish and swam with turtles.

The following morning the boat was finally fixed but it was time to go back to port as the 3 days were up. The weather hadnt got any better either so everyone was in a horrible mood and as soon as we got back to Airlie Beach all 30 of us went straight to the boats head offices to go nuts basically. We got a 50% refund which is quite good but to be fair we only saw 50% of the things we were meant to so its all good. We went to the pub with a few friends from the boat and celebrated australia day before we caught our afternoon bus to Townsville which was a ghost town. Especially as it was Australia Day and the whole country was meant to be celebrating big time. So we headed to bed for an early one.

The next day we were meant to be heading to magnetic island but it was horrible rain and we didnt see much point in going to a place for its beaches when the weather was going to be rubbish. So instead we hopped on a bus to Cairns as it was meant to be a lively place.