Whitsunday Funday

After a brilliant evening at our Airlie Beach hostel making mates and almost winning the quiz twice we struggled up first thing the next morning with slightly red eyes and a mild headache, shivering and wondering why the hell we had decided to go on this tour in the first place. Our grouchiness soon disappeared though as we arrived at the jetty to be greeted by possibly the most enthusiastic Australian guy we had met yet and thats saying something! He kitted us out with our wetsuits and guided us to the much needed free tea urn. After a short wait it was our turn to get going so we clambered over the sides of three ocean raft boats to get to ours having taken our shoes off first of course which one Dutch boy was very weary about, wanting to hold on to his obviously very precious Fila trainers.

With 25 of us safely on and our sarcastic driver satisfied that the Italian family with hundreds of bags had stowed them well enough we set off at top speed while our guide Mary demonstrated the life jackets before turning up the tunes. It was bloody freezing but the speed and the wind were also pretty exhilarating. Our first stop was Hook Island where we donned our very flattering wet suits which was quite a novelty for me as i was a wet suit virgin! The Italians had obviously bought all their own designer gear and there was one show off Barry who decided he was tough enough not to wear one. A decision I'm also certain he regretted as the water was FREEZING, even in the wet suit we were shaking and it didn't seem to let up. The beautiful and brightly coloured coral of the Great Barrier Reef made up for it though and we also saw sting rays and a turtle which was brilliant. Barry spent most of the time sitting on the beach in the sun..

Our second stop was another snorkelling bay where we had the opportunity to maybe see some fish up to 2 metres long. The thought of this terrified me, a feeling that was intensified as they started throwing fish food around the boat to entice them. This along with the fact that I was still very cold made it extremely difficult to get back in the water but I manned up and jumped back in, swimming quickly in the opposite direction of the fish food. Luckily for me the biggest fish we saw were probably about half a metre and they were wonderfully bright colours, some shiny and some almost neon. Barry was still on the beach.

The next part of the trip was really spectacular, we were driven to Whitehaven beach where we walked to the look out point at the top and were rewarded with fabulous views of bright white beaches and swimming pool, aqua marine blue seas. We ran down to the beach and spent an hour having lunch on the most perfect sand looking at the most perfect sea I have ever seen. We never wanted to leave although sadly we had to. The fun didn't stop there though. On the way back we spotted dolphins and flying fish and then were really lucky to see a group of huge whales jumping out the water and flapping and clapping their fins. It was an awesome display which we were able to watch so closely and would have been the perfect end to the trip had Fila trainer boy (who had now put his trainers in a separate place to everyone else to keep them safe) not been getting in everyone's way and insisting that boats were whales and leaning out the side of the boat whilst we were going along singing some of the words to the dance songs that were blaring out. Our driver Matty was less than impressed with this display and was muttering things about him under his breath. As a side note he also had the weirdest little nipples I have ever seen.

Anyway aside from this we had a really ace time and it was more than worth braving the minor hangovers in the morning and the icy sea to see all the brilliant things we saw that day. And to top it all off I'm pretty sure Fila left his cropped white trousers on the boat and went home in his pants.