11/27/10

At a little before 7 am Tommy started to get the breakfast ready in the kitchen. This means it was time for me to wake up since I was sleeping on a padded bench located almost in the kitchen. In the morning we sailed over to Whitsunday Island and were dropped off for 3 hours to enjoy the island. We were all given stinger suits to wear since it was stinger season and it would protect us if we came in contact with them. The suits were very light weight. We were dropped off on Tongue Bay and told that we could hike and see the over look of the island and the super white beaches. Then we could take another path to the beach. I hung out with Nick, Adrian, Al, and Nicolette and we had a good time trying to ride waves and just goof around. Nicolette had heard if you put the sand in your teeth it help to make them more white. She tried this while I laughed and took pictures......I still find this funny, silly Dutch girl. The sand on the beaches were remarkably white and the pictures I took from the look out spot are amazing with the contrast of the colors of the water and the sand. We then were waiting around to be picked up and a lot of other boats were also here to drop off or pick up people and I saw my friends Peter and Rachael that I had met at Magnetic Island waiting for their boat. It was nice to run into them and I had just the day prior sent them some pictures to their email account but Peter said they did not get them. They were just a a little day trip and were on a much larger power ship then my little sail boat. When we arrived at the boat it was lunch time and then we set off to a place to go do some snorkeling. When we started to leave we saw a huge sea turtle come to the surface for air and we were lucky to be fairly close to it so we got a great view of it. It was nice snorkeling and I was the first in the water and the last one out. I did a lot of skin diving to get down near the coral and get a better look then just chilling at the surface. It was nice to be swimming around and being active instead of just sitting on a boat. I did not see any crazy cool aquatic animals but I had fun even if now I am spoiled and have done a fair number of dives on the great barrier reef. That night we had a snack again of crackers, cheese, and some veggies with a dip that was quite nice. We then had dinner and I talked some more with Kim and Matthew and got a real kick out of them and found them interesting. Matthew is 26 and is interested and does some triathlons and his goal is to do the New Zealand Ironman in 2012 with his uncle who has already done three Ironman competitions. Kim is a teacher of performing arts for dance, music, and theater. I found it very interesting that she also teaches some circus skills like trapeze and such and besides some juggling I can not even see anything like that being done in my school growing up. I was a fun relaxing day and I like most of the others decided to turn in somewhat early at like 10 pm.