After a very sunny Cairns we arrived in a very rainy Airlie Beach ready to set sail for the Whitsundays. Once again we had a killer 12 hour bus to get there but luckily we had an empty bus so we could make ourselves at home and spread out. We travelled in the day instead of the night, so we couldn't sleep and went a bit mental instead. We checked into our hostel - Magnums - which probably has the must stupid staff/people we've ever met. It took us about 30 minutes and we both came close to hitting them. We got shown to our 'room' which actually was more like a shed with gale force winds blowing through it (ok, maybe a slight exagerration), and were told they had run out of pillows for us. After restraining Hoyle who had officially lost it, we decided to change to a twin room that was less shedlike and more room like. It even had a pillow. Proper luxury.
So, it rained...a lot. Which meant we ate... a lot. The low point was probably when we had Domino's for lunch and dinner. In our defence, the kitchen was rubbish and we decided that 'we definately couldn't cook anything in it at all' - only to meet people later on that had cooked a full on meal in there. Must. Try. Harder.
On Tues 5th we boarded our boat - 'The Clipper' - for 2 days and 2 nights after stocking up on essential supplied which mainly meant a load of goon. For anyone that doesn't know what goon is, it's dirt cheap wine that tastes disgusting, has fish eggs in it, and gives you the worst hangovers. We lapped it right up. The Clipper was a really nice boat that had a hot tub and a slide on it (neither of which we actually got round to after seeing the very sexy 'stinger suits' you had to wear to go in the water, but that's not the point). The rain managed to hold off while we boarded but it soon started to lash it down so the goon was bought out at about 6 while 50 of us huddled below deck. the sea was pretty choppy which lef to us stumbling around all over the place and led to some pretty interesting injuries involving some very steep stairs on my part. We had a cabin to oursleves which was interesting as we tried to cling onto our beds whilst trying to get to sleep.
The next day we got woken up at 7am by the sounds of a saucepan hammering on our door which we were not impressed by. Luckily the sun had come out and we were taken to Whitehaven beach on little speedboats. Whitehaven really is a gorgeous beach with the whitest sand and we were really lucky we got to see it in the sun and that it lived up to all those expectations. However, when we got back on board, the rain started up again which led to another very rocky sleeptime. That evening we actually got up on deck and watched the sunset with a few beers - not a bad way to spend an evening really. We even got the company of a shark and a dolphin swimming around our boat.
The next day was yet another early wake up call before we set back to shore - rain free! We got back about 12 and chilled out in airlie, treated ourselves to a meal out for 'surviving' sleeping on a boat (we couldn't get more melodramatic if we tried) and headed out with the rest of our group for a night out. Made the slight mistake of forgetting to get on sheets before we went out which meant we had a very cold nights sleep. I would say 'you live and you learn', but apparently we haven't learnt as it's the second time we've done this now. The next day we had a lovely 16 hour bus overnight bus to board...luckily we did actually make it in time as we had forgotten what time it was and declared that going on the internet to check 'wasn't in the budget' so we made a guess and hoped for the best. Getting it within half an hour wasn't too bad!
SJ x