Where to start….. We’ve almost been putting off writing this post because we had such an unbelievably amazing time we knew that it’ll be so hard to do it justice! We left on December 1st with a tear in our eye so here’s the previous 3/4 days…..
We got off another bus at Airlie beach – it was only 5 hours, the buses were really starting to grow on us now, having a chance to completely sit and chill out, watch a film, and we had still succeeded in getting our favourite seats every journey so far haha! Great day for the weather so pulled ourselves through town heavily laden to Magmums where we were staying!! Got a double room for $54 so we were happy!! First things first we found the booking agency we’d booked our trip with and checked in all ready for tomorrow! Hunted down a post office for mums birthday, but as usual it said in the book the town had a post office but what they really meant was a post box! We wandered around town, had a look in the shops and headed down to the lagoon to chill out for a little while. Airlie beach seemed really nice, our favorite town so far, nice and chilled out with a simple set up. We stayed at the lagoon on the fake sand til sunset and then headed back for the night. We stocked up on a couple of boxes of wine, crisps and grapes! Packed up a little bag each for the boat trip and got a good nights sleep on dry land!
We were getting better at our early mornings, and not dragging out every second of sleep, so we got up with plenty of time, 6.30am! We dropped off our bags somewhere safe for the next couple of days, popped in the supermarket to get some breakfast and then walked around the coast to where all the boats were. Got there in perfect time! And at 8.30 we boarded our little wooden sailing boat!! Was a lot smaller than I expected at first, but you soon got used to it! We got briefed on all the safety stuff, what happens if we discover a big whole in the boat and our limit of 60second fresh water showers a day etc! And started off with tea and cookies….. Only the beginning of the frequent feeding schedule!!
We spent the next several hours sailing through the sea, it was gorgeous sunny weather, a strong breeze, was looking good! We had a good lunch, there was plenty of food for 2nd or 3rds and arrived at Whitehaven beach some time after midday. There were 15 of us on the boat which was a really good little number, enough people for you to get to know and chat too with a really good variety of people! We anchored at sea and in 2 batches got in the little speedboat/dingy! This navigated slowly over the really shallow coral and dropped us off at a rocky beach. When everyone was there we walked to the lookout point. We were incredibly lucky with time at it was at the point of very low tide and this is when it looks most spectacular, (see video we’ll try to post!!) It was absolutely breathtaking.
The girl from the boat then proceeded to take A LOT of photos of everyone! She had an everything proof camera and it went everywhere (beaches, diving, on board) and so the whole point is you didnt need to ruin your camera, they’d take all the pictures and hopefully you’d buy the dvd afterward! After lots of staring at awe we made it down to the beach. It has the finest sand in the world, 99% silicone, apparently NASA used it for the hubble telescope lense, and when they wanted more Australia said no, not sure how true that is, but either way it was unbelievably white sand, which meant even in the heat it never got hot as it reflected it all back, and as fine as flour. After more pictures! We donned our wet suits and headed into the wavy sea! Sea temperature was noticeably cooler than what we had had further north, but absolutely turquoise and crystal clear no matter how deep you got! We saw a whole group of stingrays in the sea right by us and carefully crept around. The time here was amazing and the girl said it was the best bit of her job getting to be on that beach twice a week! Around 5ish we headed back to the boat, and we saw our first turtle come up by the boat near us and poke its head out for air!! It was amazing, they’re so much bigger than imagined and was one of the few things we were really hoping to see so that was a great start!!
Back on the boat we had more tea and snacks and sailed to where we would be spending the night. We didn’t make it there before dinner was ready and so we ate in the dark on deck. Again masses of food, the novelty not wearing off!! And we munched away!
When we were nicely anchored in a very sheltered bay (it was perfectly still!) we headed down to the deck for a briefing on all the fish we may see the next day and to go through all the days pictures, oh no….!!! We all squeezed around a wooden table in a small room downstairs aimed at the screen! Flo, our german dive instructor started us all off with maps of where we were, explained the blue bits were sea, the green bits were land, the yellow bits were sand and the orange bits were coral and although the islands look like NZ they were not! After covering all the basics that frequently get asked! We moved onto fish! Flos’ top 50! He went through each one descirbing where they’d be found, their characteristics, dangerous or friendly etc etc! Finding Nemo’s fish came up frequently seeing as it was set on the great barrier reef and Flo was saying how much research they did before the film, as we came to see later, the characteristics of the fish in the film are very close to reality, funny one being how turtles looked drugged and that is a side affect of eating jelly fish it gets them high haha he then showed us a picture of a turtle that doesn’t eat jelly fish and it looked really evil he nearly made the mistake of touching it and it nearly having his fingers bitten off haha! After the fish briefing it was time to be embarrassed as Flo slowly clicked through every one of the days photos haha there were a lot of everyone and plenty of great moments!! Had a really good night, really excited about all the snorkeling the following day and sat on deck for some drinks before bed.
Thinking about it I’m not sure if we ever took pictures below deck…. Which is a great shame cos we had a little double bunk above a single wedged into the wall right by the main stairs to deck haha nonetheless it was surprisingly comfy and we slept really well, until 6 that is when the anchor came up!! I stayed in bed determined to ignore the loud noise and to make the most of every second in bed!! By 7 everyone was on deck eating away at a good breakfast, and Flo later explained that he normally did the days briefing at about half 6 as everyone got woken up at 6 by the anchor and would come on deck, but on this particular boat most people determinedly slept through it haha
While eating and sailing Flo went through everything people need to know to dive and snorkel. Lots of people on the boat wanted to do their first dives and so he went through this thoroughly. I already knew that I wasnt allowed to dive without being signed off from the doctor, on the medical questionnaire I tick yes, but this time I put no down for all the answers leaving it up to me to decide. We sailed for an hour to our first dive spot, and there were 3 groups down to dive, 4ppl per group. I put myself down as a maybe into the 2nd group! I was all for being super sensible and saying no, but then decided, well I might as well do the bit in shallow water for 10mins just so I have an idea of what its like, (after this point and testing your skills its up to you whether you continue and dive) so I convinced myself into it that way, I really really wanted to give it a go and would have been gutted to leave Australia without getting even a little try! So we got all kitted up and I felt myself shrink a couple of inches when I stood up with the weight of the tank and belt!!!! Somehow got down the ladder off the side of the baot and into the little boat which would take us out to shallow waters near a beach. James was super excited he was getting to dive again, although nervous about having to do all the tests before you go on the proper dive. I just hoped my lungs would stay in 1 piece and it’d be all good!!!
We got into the water and started off with the basics, standing and leaning your head into the water and just breathing with the aparatus! LIke snorkeling just breathing in dryer air! Once we’d kind of got used to that we did a couple of repeats after me, how to get water out of your breathing tube, out of your goggles, and if your breathing apparatus gets knocked out of your mouth how to easily find it again! We took it in turns doing this with him until he was happy and that went absolutely fine! And so went for the dive!
James was now as happy as a bee swimming along, gotten the bit he didn’t like out of the way and could just enjoy the rest now! Swimming along I didn’t particularly like it and for no reason was all panicky, Flo brought me back up to the surface, held both my hands and basically sat with me til I was calm!!
We continued and it became apparent that the only way I was going to calmly make it through was if I was holding Flo’s hand the entire time. Which I did!! Didnt see much that dive, was good at the nice slow breathing but couldnt bear the thought of swimming around on my own, was too worried what would happen if something went wrong or if I couldnt see anyone!! After a while we came back up to the surface! Everyone had loved it but me!! I was super glad to have given it a go but was pretty sure just the whole swimming underwater thing wasnt for me lol climbed back on the boat very cold and very happy it’d gone well and had had a try!! Flo then came round asking if anyone would be doing a second dive to which James eagerly said yes and I said nope and explained it I really enjoyed it but just didnt think it was for me! Flo later came up to me and said I’d done brilliantly and that I should really do another and he wouldn’t mind holding my hand through another if that was all I needed! So no changed to I’ll think about it!! Had more tea and cake! By this time I now felt like I really should do another, and didnt want to feel that I hadn’t given my best….. so did another haha!!
Second dive was amazing and we thought it was the best out of the 3…. Yep I did a third… even though I came back up happy to finish at 2 haha. In the second dive we swam through an underwater arch, that’s the best way to describe it, but it really took your breath away, behind the arch was a really really dark blue so it felt like you were almost swimming through to the night. Was very cool, and more fish coral etc! When surfacing and waiting for the speedboat to pick us up a turtle also swam right by us and when we were on the surface popped its head up for some air – amazing!! So did second dive, James LOVED and I felt it was a lot better but happy to stop. Yet when I saw everyone getting ready for the last one and Flo said he’d still hold my hand all the way through it I had to do it! We had a really great day, were absolutely knakered but both very happy and proud of ourselves and had bbq steak for dinner!!! Followed by a show of all the days pictures..…..…. Flo’s first group were great, all swum together the most perfectly he’s ever had, and then his second group had me, whom he let go of once to take a picture of me and james and then I speedily swum back!! He took great photos for us though while we were down there so we didn’t have to worry about that just concentrate on looking and swimming along!!
The next day started early again but we were going kayaking off the boat, so no anchor to wake us up!! Just the smell of bacon and egg, that seemed to work better! We were in the kayaks by 8am, felt perfectly normal at the time! And paddled around the bays, against the wind, beautiful hot cloudless day! We ate on the boat and then spent the afternoon sailing back to Airlie..… It was VERY windy..… which meant VERY VERY rocky!!! James had had too much lunch and spent most of the return journey curled up thinking he was going to bring it all back up and sleep through it, and I discovered that I definitely don’t have sea sickness as we thought and enjoyed sitting on the edge of the boat all the way back. We left the boat very sad, they were having drinks altogether in the evening but we were booked on a night bus then Fraser Island trip the next day that couldn’t be changed at so late notice, so had to miss it. Walked back with definite post boat trip blues wishing it hadnt had to end or we could have dragged it out longer!!
Although it’s a super long post, there is sooo much that happened over those couple of days that want to share, and you wouldn’t believe how much we’ve missed out!! One being the range of people on the boat, in specific, Oggie and his girlfriend from Bosnia!! First people we’ve met from there! This is because they live in Holland now, and if you live in Bosnia you can only travel to a few very select countries. Anyway he was indescribable!!! Stories of grandees, guns, stonings, everything imaginable said in the most normal chilled out way as if it was soooo normal. Excellent story of how he drove the groups jeep in friseur island, loved it bumping over the sand, and a minor detail of the story was the 2 girls crying in the back and someone bleeding due to his driving! Which he only found out later – and still wasn’t that bothered!! He was very funny, made a living playing poker, lost big and won big, in his early 20’s. Amazing sense of humour, but some of his views were quite extreme and later at night while discussing something with Flo somehow likened his opinions to Hitlers, in the fact that he thought a lot of people certain beliefs/actions! Flo replied saying there was a man who said similar things, his name was Hitler! So hard to describe it all. Flo was fantastic too – was from Germany, served in the Military upon rescue helicopters and now worked in Australia and was planning for staying there for the next several years, had his head screwed on very well for someone of only 26, very calm, obviously clever, and very interesting, and kept and impressively calm head when discussing issues with Oggie!! An older couple from Canada were on the boat, a couple from Australia, Norfolk, 3 people from Holland and 2 Chinese guys that were studying in Sydney!
Overall an amazing 3 days, James highlight so far, and definitely in the top 3 for me, missed everything about it desperately when we got off as loved every second.
Best of all these pictures can be found here!:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/itsbeenemotional/sets/72157622975960456/
There’s quite a lot so will take a couple of days for them all to be online!
UPDATE: NOW ALL ONLINE!!!
3 Comments