June 2-4, Day 36-38
Where: Whitsunday Islands
This is another long post, but it's been one of the best parts of the trip so I want to remember all the details.
Oh man, it's hard to even know where to begin. I've just gotten back from the islands and have taken a much needed shower and now I'm tired! I have to get going on this however, or I may not get back to it. So I'll start with the first morning when we had to meet the boat down at the marina. We checked in at the hostel booking agent and then told us to be at the marina at 9:15 and they gave us a little map of how to get there. We had plenty of time and were packing and left with 15 min to get there. The town in tiny so we thought we'd be fine. However, the map was basically worthless and we couldn't remember the directions exactly, so we ended up rushing all over the town trying to find the marina. I stopped and asked for directions but they were tourists and didn't know. Figures. I called the booking office in a panic trying to ask for directions but I couldn't tell them where I was. I finally ran into a hotel and asked the front desk. We got to the marina at 9:20 and I was literally running in one directions looking for the meeting place while Pat paid for parking. I had to stop and ask for directions from a really nice shopkeeper who talked very slowly. Her husband was in the shop too and together they were trying to figure out what meeting place I was meant to be at. They were talking very slowly (and not even by my rushed standards) and I finally just had to say, “I'm running really late and am getting stressed out. Thanks for the directions,” and then I ran back out to the van. I grabbed my bags and ran ahead while Pat followed. Once we got to the meeting place at 9:25 everyone was just sitting around waiting for the captain anyways. It ended up being such a stressful morning when it shouldn't have been at all! But we made it onto the boat with the only real problem being the blisters my flip flops had given me.
We were on the “Samurai” boat which is a racing yacht that was built in 1979. It was raced for a while and then sold and turned into a touring sail boat. The deck and the outside of the yacht have been kept up very nicely. The living quarters beneath deck weren't bad, but you could tell it was a bit old. It smelled of musty sea air, but from what we saw in brochures many of the boats seemed to be old and similar to ours. Our bed was up at the front of the boat so our feet were stuck down at a point. Beneath the boat didn't matter much however, because we spent all our time above deck!
The first day was sunny(!!) and we spend about an hour going out to Hook Island. Our first snorkeling spot was also the sight of our free introductory scuba dive. We split up into groups of four and the captain (a sort of bro-ish dude in his mid 30s) took us out in our groups. Most of us were quite nervous and I certainly was. They are quite strict restrictions on scuba diving in Australia and because Pat has asthma we don't know if he'll pass a dive medical and get cleared to dive. Intro dives are shallow though and his asthma isn't too bad these days so he was able to do the intro dive. We still don't know if he'll get cleared to do deep dives. Anyways, I was a bit nervous for him to dive, but he was totally fine, and we went together in the first dive group.
The instructor showed us a few basic skills in shallow water before we went down. I was feeling good about breathing in the regulator in shallow water but when they put the weighted belt on me and I sunk down under I started to get nervous. I had a brief moment of wanted to back out of it, but I knew I would completely regret it if I did. The instructor was really good about moving slowly and checking on us regularly, which made me feel safe. If felt a lot like snorkeling only with a big heavy thing on your back. We didn't go too far out and we were only under for about 15 minutes, but we did get to see some nice coral. It's cool just to be down there completely surrounded by water. While we were scuba diving I found that I couldn't enjoy everything we were looking at quite as much as when snorkeling because I was also focused on breathing and not drowning and such. But while snorkeling I was able to enjoy every detail of what I was looking at.
I can't even begin to explain how amazing the reef is here. We weren't in the best of the best of the Great Barrier Reef, but the Whitsundays do have some really good stuff. It is absolutely another world down there. It is so quiet that you can hear “snap, crackle, pop” noises that come from the little organisms that make the coral. You can also hear when nearby fish go up to the coral to feed off of it. They make little crunching noises. It may sound a bit cheesy, but I honestly felt grateful towards the sea life for letting me come and observe their world. It's a whole new landscape with completely different colors and sounds than the rest of earth. Where else in nature do you see florescent colored creatures that almost appear to glow? While all of us were out there snorkeling the first day we just kept coming up and talking to each other about how incredible it all was. It was low tide where we were so the coral was in shallow water, in some places only inches underneath of us. I could go on forever about how beautiful it was. A few of the people on the boat had underwater cameras and I got some of their pictures after wards so I'll put those up. It was so exciting to finally get to see the Great Barrier Reef!
The other neat thing about where we dove the fist day was the beach. Not all of the beaches on the islands are open to the public, but this one was. The beach was completely covered in small pieces of dead coral that had washed up. I've never seen a beach completely covered in coral. It's actually a bit sad that so much coral has died and washed up from people walking on it, but I'm sure that happens naturally as well.
The evening of the first night we anchored in a nearby bay called Butterfly Bay I think. We had a steak dinner and then we all sat around on the deck drinking and listening to music. We had a really great group of people on the boat and it was fun to get to know them all. There were 13 of us total which was lucky because there can be as many as 20 people on a trip, which would make for a very crowded boat. There were people from Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Hong Kong, Canada and England and everyone spoke English pretty well. Pat and I got really tired early the first night so we were the first to bed. It was also really cold upstairs the first night. I didn't love where our bed was because it made me feel a little bit claustrophobic, but there was a door nearby that led up to the deck so having that open all night helped.
The next morning we were the first of the passengers up and it was nice to be the only ones sitting up on the deck as the sun was rising. We had wonderful weather the first two days with calm water and perfectly clear skies. Without wind weren't able to put the sails up, but having calm water to snorkel in was perfect. We arrived at Manta Ray Bay early, earlier than most people wanted to get in the water in fact. Pat was awesome though because he always wanted to get in the water and was always one of the first people to get put his wetsuit and gear on. We couldn't go on the beach at this site so we all jumped off the boat and swam in towards shore. This time the tide was in so there was more water over the reef and the water wasn't quite as clear, but the coral was still beautiful. We were hoping to see turtles at this site, but unfortunately we didn't. Apparently Manta Ray Bay is one of the best snorkeling spots in the Whitsundays and in fact, we had to convince another yacht to let us have their mooring because the only other spot where we could anchor was taken. It was here that we saw our first really big fish. There was a big green and blue one and another big gray one. We would try and follow the pretty ones but then I would usually get distracted by another really pretty fish. I can't believe how many kinds of fish there are! And types of coral and plants as well. Like I said, there is just a whole other world under water.
After sausages for lunch we laid out on the deck as we motored along for an hour or so to Whitehaven Beach. Whitehaven Beach is the most famous beach in the Whitsundays, and one of the best beaches in all of Australia. In fact, it is sometimes listed as one of the top 10 beaches in the world. Somehow I had missed all of the hype about this beach and I had no idea what it looked like. We anchored offshore on the opposite side of the island. They took us to show in a little boat and then we had to do a 15 minute walk through the woods to get to the beach. However, we first hiked up to a lookout on the hill. As we came our of the woods onto the look out everyone gasped. We had never, ever seen a sight like this one. There's no way to describe it except that the sand and the water looked like a tie dye of white and multiple shades of teal and blue. The sand in similar to the sand at Lake MacKenzie on Fraser Island where it is perfectly white and incredibly fine. There is a huge beach and it shallow a long ways out into the water. After taking a million pictures from angle of the lookout, we all walked down to the beach.
As we started walking across the beach we noticed a few small crabs in front of us. They scurried along and then popped down into little holes in the sand. We noticed some small groups of them but then always ran away from us before we could get too close. I looked up and saw some darker patches of sand in front of me and then I realized that it was darker because the sand was completely covered by little crabs running along. I looked around and that we were completely surrounded by swarms of these crabs, all running away from us. I suddenly felt like I was in a Tomb Rader film or something and I imagined them all rushing at me trying to eat me. Luckily, these guys were running as fast as they could away from my and then always got out of my before I reached them. It was truly insane how many crabs there were, and even weirder to think of how many more there were buried in the sand.
It was almost a 10 minute walk across the beach to the water, and once Pat and I got to the water we walked another 10 minutes out before the water got any deeper than our knees. We could see small rays out in the perfectly clear water but we never got too close to one. Once we got to the actual ocean area we realized that there was a fairly strong current and it wasn't that great for swimming. We also saw that the rest of the group had moved further down the beach so we walked back to join everyone.
We only had a couple of hours at the beach and we spent it looking for rays, throwing a ball around, and generally frolicking in the insanely blue water. Us girls had a fun photo shoot together and when the guys' turn came around they about killed us with laughter by doing a somewhat R rated photo shoot of their own. Our time at the beach was capped off with a couple of Swiss guys running ahead of us all so that they could strip down and along the beach with no clothes on. Thankfully they were a long way from us, haha. While we were there the tide had gone out too much for the boat to pick us up where it left us. It came around to the beach where we were and they came in with the little boat to pick us up. It was sad to leave Whitehaven because I don't know if I'll ever see a beach as gorgeous as this one again. There really can't be too many other prettier ones on Earth!
The second night we had roast beef for dinner and then spent another evening up on deck drinking and listening to music. The night was warmer than before and we didn't get tired nearly as early. We stayed out until almost 1am with everyone. It was so fun having being with a group of people our age after traveling together with just the two of us for so many weeks. I got to be friends with a couple of British girls in particular and a German girl, Laura. Laura had a leather band wrapped around her wrist a few times and I mentioned that I liked it. It was kangaroo leather and she had some extra in her bag that she gave me when we got back to Airlie. Now I have a kangaroo band too!
The next morning we were up early again and we motored along for about an hour before arriving at a fairly small sand spit island that is a particularly good spot for seeing turtles. It was overcast that morning and we were all a bit cold, but we took the little boat in to the beach and snorkeled around. It didn't take us long to find our first turtle. We swam along with it and many of us dove down to touch its back. Sea turtles are so cute and chill. They just swim along slowly, looking like they have no where in particular to go. We ended up seeing probably 8 turtles at that spot, some of them were just laying down in the coral. It was exciting each time we found a new one. It was so much fun to swim with them! I got cold after a while and a group of us girls swam back out to the boat to get warm. Pat was the last one left in the water, getting back on the boat only when they told us it was time to go. That guy could snorkel all day long! It was our last snorkeling spot though, and it was a really pretty site.
At this point we had a ham and salad lunch and then started heading back towards Airlie Beach. It was overcast and windy which was perfect because it meant that we got to put the big sails and up and sail! I've only ever seen small sail boats that just sail along peacefully, but because this was built to be a racing yacht it didn't just sail along calmly. Once the sails were up the boat tipped far to one side and we call had to sit up on the other side of the boat holding onto the handrails. The wind wasn't super strong but I'm glad because I think it would be almost scary if that boat tipped anymore. Luckily no one got seasick. He said once when it was rainy and windy the boat was tipped so much someone almost fell over the side. Greaaaaat. It was awesome to see such a boat sail though and we all had a great final hour on the boat.
It was such a perfect trip weather wise, we couldn't have asked for anything better at this time of the year. We were bummed for the trip to end, but we were all looking forward to some good hot showers to get the salt off. I certainly wasn't going to miss the boat bathrooms :P We all planned to meet up at a bar that night where they gave free pizza out to people who had just returned from sailing trips. It turned out 5 other people were staying at the hostel where we parked, so we kept running into people during the afternoon. I met up with a couple of people to exchange photos. That evening at the bar we all had a really fun night together complete with many cheap drinks and neon paint wars (because there was a black light party going on).
Pat and I capped of the night with a stop at a pie shop because meat pies are the best midnight snack ever. Then we couldn't figure out how to get back into our hostel because the main door and the side gate were locked, so we ended up climbing over the gate. As soon as we were over we realized that there was a security guard sitting about 15 feet away with his back to us. He clearly wasn't too observant because he didn't notice us and we laughed about it all the way back to the van. We were exhausted from the trip and from the night out and it took us about 1 minute to fall asleep once we got back. Such a good ending to our wonderful Whitsunday trip!
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