We touched down in Porserpine to a balmy 32 degrees Celsius, meaning about 90 degrees. I caught a bus and headed to Airlie Beach. Once there, I checked into my hostel and went exploring. My boat didn’t leave until the following morning so I had plenty of time to entertain myself and got some amazing pictures. I decided to have dinner at a cute seafood restaurant that also happened to be a bar. I tried not to look too lonely while eating by myself, but evidently it didn’t work. Three guys and a girl a few tables down asked me to join them. They paid for my drinks the rest of the night. We did a little bar hopping around town. At the bar at my hostel, I had a dance party with a random guy who was breakin it down by himself on the dance floor. Classic. Then we ended up at Mama Africa. This club is African animal themed and the bathrooms are outrageous. See picture below. At about midnight I finally decided I needed to get home and went back to the hostel.
Monday morning I got up nice and early to make sure I was at the boat on time. Drinking before going on a boat, probably not the best idea but you only live life once, right? After walking for a good twenty minutes with all my stuff, I realized I had walked completely the wrong way. Typical me. I was scared I was going to miss the boat so I had to catch a cab to the marina. I arrived just in time. Everyone checked in and got some last minute snacks, picked up our stinger suits (to protect us from jellyfish) and then we were off on the Apollo.The water was crystal blue and the weather was beautiful. The Whitsundays are made up of 74 tropical islands in the Coral Sea. Only 8 of the islands are actually inhabited. On the first day we headed from Airlie Beach through the passage between Hook Island and Whitsunday Island up to Mackerel Bay. It’s here that we got to do our first scuba dive (FOR FREE!). The coral was beautiful and there were tons of fish swimming in and out of the coral. There were colorful clams that could sense your shadow over them and would close up as you swam over. After the dive I then got to snorkel around for a while and then dried out on the beach. We then sailed back down to the passage to anchor for the night.
The food on the boat was phenomenal. The kitchen was teeny but somehow they were able to cook such good food. We had pasta, steaks, salads, chicken dishes and even got bacon and eggs for breakfast the last day. Needless to say, we didn’t go hungry.
We were woken up nice and early for breakfast and to set out for our next location. It was cloudy and the rain kept coming in spurts. At first it was bearable on the deck, but once the sky opened up we all hurried back down to the cabin. They broke out big yellow raincoats and we were set. We sailed down the side of Whitsunday Island to Whitehaven Beach, the second most beautiful beach in the world. The beach stretches over seven kilometres and has some of the purest sand in the world. It’s so pure you can actually use it to exfoliate your skin and clean your jewellery, which I of course did. My skin felt amazing afterward and my jewellery shined. They also told us you could use the sand to brush your teeth and deep clean them. That was a BAD idea.
After spending the morning on the beach we loaded back up on the boat. We headed back up around Hook Island near Hayman Island. Hayman Island has one of the most exclusive resorts in the Whitsundays. People known to vacation there include Brad and Angie. We hopped off the boat to do some snorkelling across the way near another smaller island. I had on my stinger suit and was ready for some snorkelling. A lil while into my snorkelling I felt a really sharp pain on my back. The pain then travelled down my back and down my right arm. At that point I realized I had been stung by a jellyfish THROUGH my stinger suit. I want my money back. The jellyfish in Australia are pretty dangerous because a lot of them can be deadly if you don’t get treated quickly. I had no idea what the jellyfish looked like but I wouldn’t know if it was dangerous or not anyway. I looked up out of the water and saw that I was pretty far from the beach. Even though I was in a lot of pain, I needed to get to the beach in case I started having a bad reaction to the sting. So I swam hard all the way to the beach. Once there I pulled off my suit in case the jellyfish was still in there. I was still alive and wasn’t having any other reactions so I figured I was safe. Just in case, I called over our deck hand Benny and told him I’d been stung. He doused me in vinegar and told me I’d be fine. However, I had no desire to get back in the water after that and it kinda ruined my morning.We then got back on the boat and headed down to Blue Pearl Bay. We arrived just before sundown and I suited up for my first ever night dive! We went right at sundown. Once we were in the water it felt a little like the movie Open Water. Once I convinced myself that I wasn’t going to get eaten by a shark, I settled down and we started descending. Night dives are surprisingly calming. You can see your buddies a lot easier because everyone has torches on at all times. You also get to focus on the details rather than being overwhelmed by all the colors and fish. We saw shrimp and crabs hiding in the coral. All you could see were their red beady eyes looking out at the torch. At one point my light beam flashed over a humungous snout. Not gonna lie, I screamed a little. Turns out it was just a huge Flowery Cod. We actually saw a lot of them and after the first time I wasn’t too scared. Then our dive instructor pointed out a beautiful baby sea anemone. They are extremely rare to see as youngins because they stay hidden in the coral until they’re about 40 years old and can support themselves. It was beautiful and pink and glowing in the light of the torch. We then settled on the bottom and held our torches against our chests so that we were in complete darkness. We waved our hands in the water and saw the light show. These little fish store up sunlight all day and when you wave your hand they glow like tiny stars. Awesome.
Once back on the boat we had dinner and celebrated Kelly’s birthday. We broke out the party hats and the drinking games commenced. At one point we wanted to go to the front of the boat to take some Titanic pictures. Kelly screamed bloody murder and went running back to the back of the boat. Evidently our dive master sleeps on the top deck in a “weather sak” and she almost stepped on his head. He popped up and said hello and sent us all screaming and running. Funny night.
We woke up bright and early to some rain, but it was gone by breakfast time. We had some bacon and eggs and then got ready to dive. Blue Pearl Bay was awesome at night, but it was even more amazing during the day. The colors were vibrant and there were so many fish. Our dive master took water bottles filled with bread and released some in the water so that the fish would swim all around us. We also saw lots of clown fish in their sea anemones. Then we came up on Elvis. Elvis is a Hump-headed Maori Wrasse. He’s huge and pretty much like a puppy dog. He’s so friendly and loves to be petted. I even got to give him a hug! Literally, I hugged a fish! Hopefully I got some good pictures of him with the underwater camera I had.
After the dive I spent some time on the beach. The beach was actually made of old pieces of coral so it was a little rough on the feet. I powered through it though and walked all the way down to get some pictures. Then I went snorkelling. A lot of the coral is right up close to the surface so you can dive down a little and see it as close as you would diving. I followed some fish around and saw a beautiful hot pink and yellow fish. I then headed back to the beach for some more sun before getting back on the boat. It was then time to pack up and head back to Airlie Beach.Not being able to shower for three days was crucial. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but the mixture of sand and seawater makes it pretty unbearable. Once we got back to our hostels, I roomed up with 3 girls from the boat and we started taking real showers. It felt AMAZING. We then headed to Phoenix Bar for free pizza and a reunion with all our boat friends. We danced and drank and had such a good time. It ended up being quite a late night for all of us, but well worth it.
On my last day of the vacation, I needed food as soon as I woke up. I headed with Kelly to Mackers (or McDonalds as we call it). We both wanted burgers and it was 10:25am. They serve breakfast until 10:30am. So we ordered a drink and a hashbrown each, and got back in line 5 minutes later. The lady said, “Oh, are you still waiting for your hashbrown?” I said, “No. I’m here for lunch.” Then I headed with my new friends to the lagoon at Airlie Beach. We chatted about the trip and our plans for the next few weeks. It was nice and relaxing. Later that afternoon I travelled back to good ol Brisbane.
Only two more weeks left in Brisbane :( BUT my parents will be here in two weeks!! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment