Whitsunday Islands

Day 71

Bad day. Stinky, tired, long bus journey, psychotic shower when we get to scummy hostel and sweet chilly sauce explosion in the cool bag, and nothing for dinner but chips – blurgh!

Day 72

Feel better today as no longer tired! Explore Airlie Beach and like it :-) Buy a pretty bag so I no longer have to have two rucksacks... things are looking up!

Day 73

Sailing today! Not a lot of wind, so we mainly use the motor, but we're on a sailing boat! And the scenery is too beautiful for words! The whitsunday islands are gorgeous, and the sea is a deep, clear, azure! Wow!

Day 74

Jam packed day today, first to whitehaven beach, which is gorgeous, white, fine silicone sand – which I appreciate from a lookout before trying to sleep away my impending illness in the shade!

Then we go to luncheon bay (so called because captain cook stopped for luncheon here!) and snorkel – its amazing, there are fish everywhere, of all sizes (from a tiny yellow and black one, which hung around with us for hrs, to massive metre long monsters!) And the coral is awesome, loads of different types and colours rising up out of the sand in weird and wonderful shapes... then we went diving, through coral ravines and into massive shoals of fish – absolutley fantastic!! We spent around 5 hours in the sea today!

Day 75

Last day on our boat, The Samurai, today, and more snorkelling for breakfast. It is again, very beautiful, but the stingers are out today. It is jellyfish season now, so whenever you enter the water you have to wear an oh-so-attractive stinger suit (or rick death by box jellyfish – I wonder which i'd prefer!). Yesterday there were no jellies around, but today the water is full of tiny, see through stingers, who are completely non dangerous, but I tell you now, their stings still hurt! Especially all over your face!

On shore the stinging sensation stops after about 5 minutes, so not too bad, but I still only snorkelled for around 15 mins – the pain was too much and i'm beginning to feel pretty fluy :-( I'm so scared of the jellies and my illness I even pass up the chance of a $45 dive (cheap as chips but not worth the pain) And i'm happy with what I see anyway: I see Elvis (the biggest fish around) and a family of clown-fish in their anemone, baby fishy and all!

We get back to a better room in the hostel (cheaper and nicer as the 4 of us share a twin) and a far far better shower, and some jellybean-esque medicine – again, showers must have been invented by the gods!

Day 76

Don't do a lot today as although the jelly beans helped I still feel pretty ill. We look at buying some fins in a dive shop, as they are very cheap compared to tother Oz prices, but we look at the Vobster website and decide it will be a LOT cheaper to wait til we get home (we LIKE Vobster)!