WhitSundays and Airlie Beach, Australia

Hi Again,

After our crazy trip to Fraser Island, we had one night in Rainbow Beach before catching our 17 hour bus journey north to Airlie Beach. It wasn't as bad as it sounds. We drove about 3 hours to Hervey Bay, had a 3 hour stopover there, and then got onto another bus which was an overnight one up to Airlie Beach. When we arrived, we had to go check-in with Tribal Travel (the company we had booked our WhitSundays trip through) and then rush down to the marina to catch our boat.

It was a great few days sailing. We got on Monday morning, and returned to shore Wednesday afternoon. There were a few showers over the few days, but the sun was good enough to make an appearance for us every so often, enough to keep us happy anyway. Where we were sailing is where the Great Barrier Reef begins. We sailed mostly up around the north islands, and then down to the south to see Whitehaven Beach. There are 74 islands in the Whitsundays, so you'd need alot more than 3 days if you were to see them all!

Our first day, we set sail around 9.30 or so for about 3 hours. There were 26 of us on board so it was a great opportunity to get to know each other. There were 4 crew, and the people broke down like this: 6 Irish, 7 English, 6 German, 2 Norweigan, 1 Swedish, 2 Swiss, 1 Japanese, and 1 Canadian. Our main stop for this day was to a north island (can't think of its name) but we stopped off here for some snorkelling and scuba-diving. We each got a turn diving with the instructor, groups of 4 at a time. I had done this before in Fuerteventura so was familiar with it, but it never loses its excitement. We got to touch one of the larger fish too, he seemed very friendly now I must say! He wasn't scared of us at all. After a few hours here, it was back to the boat for food, goon and drinking games. Next day we were up early as some people had yet to do their dive. SO after this was finished we headed to Whitehaven Beach. This is the beach you'll see in most postcards/pictures of the WhitSundays. It was amazing. The sand was such a light colour, it's hard to even explaain it. There's not much fish life here, so we just lazed about on the beach for a few hours, and took the few obligatory photos, and did our foot-prints and hand-prints in the sand.

On our last day we headed for another island, called Langford Island. It's a kind of long strip of sand in the middle of the sea, kind of mad to see because half of it gets covered when it's high-tide. We went snorkelling here for a few hours, and the highlight of it was definitely swimming with the turtles!! I think myself and Emma saw 4 of them, and managed to touch one!! =D Emma had bought a waterproof case thing for her camera back in Byron Bay, so we got lodas of underwater photos. After this then we pretty much got back onto the boat and had 3 hours of sailing to get back to Airlie Beach. It was crazy, when you're doing the actual 'sailing' part, thats when they put the masts up, we all had to sit on one side, because we were so lob-sided then the other side was actually practically in the sea. Crazy! The boat was cool though. It used race in the Sydney to Hobart race, so it's built for speed. The crew were great too, and we were fed so well.

The night after arriving back in Airlie Beach, we all headed to one of the bars here. It was a fun night as most of the people came out. And when it closed, we all headed to Mama Africas (nightclub down the road)

I think Airlie Beach is my favourite town so far on the East Coast, I really love it here. It's just so relaxed. There's one main street and it's basically just bars, a few shops and hostels! It's a very backpacker town. You can't swim in the sea here because of all the stingers (jelly-fish etc) so they've built a lagoon just off the beach where hangs out all day.

Tomorrow morning we get a bus up to Townsville where we'll jump on a ferry over to Magnetic Island for 3 nights.

So until next time.....

Cathy x x