Sunday Oct 21/07 - Airlie Beach

Nicola and I at sunset just off Hook Island

Our boat, the Pacific Star, anchored in Tongue Bay

Whitehaven Beach

Another view of Whitehaven Beach

Loads of fish hanging about the reef

The fish are so brightly colored it looks like something in a movie

Table top coral like in the background is where the big fish hide

Nicola and I together on our second dive

Well we are back on solid ground now after three days on the boat. We went out on Wednesday on a 65 foot Catamaran style boat which took us all around the Whitsunday Islands. There were 21 passangers and 4 crew members on board and everything was taken care of, including of all our food. The winds made the water fairly rough for some of the trip and at least half dozen of the passengers were throwing up on the first day. Luckily Nicola, Jen and I were okay and none of us got sick. The boat was specially outfitted for diving with a platform containing all of the gear on the back. Despite having already dived a portion of the Great Barrier Reef in Cairns Nicola and I went for two more dives on this boat. We were exploring areas of the reef which are surrounding the many islands in the area, this is called fringe reef. Diving was a lot of fun, and was quite affordable to do on this boat, however we don't feel like it's something we will take up as a sport back home. It's nice to take advantage of the great sites and the affordable rates while we are here and I will likely do a little bit more in Thailand depending on how things go up there.

Overall the boat trip was incredible. Everyday we would tour around to a few different bays and popular spots around the Whitsunday area. The boat would anchor and we would have the option to Snorkel, Dive, or just relax and suntan or read on the deck. Besides our two dives we Snorkeled every site and really got to see a lot of different kinds of coral and fish. The beauty is that most of the reef is very shallow and you can see everything from just snorkeling. Our first day on the boat took us to Whitehaven Beach. This is a postcard perfect beach, rated one of the top 10 in the world. It's not hard to see why once you get there. The viewpoint above the beach allows you to see the turqoise blue water contrasted against the perfectly white sand. The sand itself is actually 99.8% pure silica (glass). It is so pure you can actually use it to polish your jewellery or exfoliate your skin. From the pictures you can see the flowing shapes on the sand bars create an incredible spiral of white and blue. Everytime the tide comes in the sand is placed in a different way, creating an all new pattern. In fact it is impossible to get the same picture twice, because everyday the pattern of the sand is completely reshaped. On our last night of the tour we anchored at a bay off Hook Island and took a dingy to the island resort. It was so cool because for some reason there was absouletly nobody staying at the resort for two days and so we had the entire bar to ourselves. All the passangers and crew trekked through a mysterious trail in the woods to come across this 'barefoot' bar on a completely secluded and totally tropical island, what a great night. It almost seemed like something out of a movie and most wondered if the whole thing was some kind of a joke, thinking "Why is there a bar here in the middle of nowhere, and how come there is nobody here?"

When we returned to land about half the passangers and crew all met up at bar called Beaches which is where our hostel is. Everyone coming off any of the dozens of different boats touring the Whitsunday Islands comes to Beaches to party when they return to land. The first round of drinks is on the bar and after that one of the German guys on our boat bought everybody drinks for the entire night! It was great, the beer flowed free and all the backpackers let loose on the dancefloor, continuing on to many of the other nightclubs in this small town. It was definitley a fun night out. Unfortunately Nicola had a stomach ache and couldn't partake in the partying, but I was smart enough to check on her many times.

Now tonight we hop on the overnight bus (13.5 hours) to Hervey Bay so we can do our tour of Fraser Island in the coming week. We'll have more to update once we have finished that and continue our way down the coast.