Great Barrier Reef & Whitsunday Islands

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  Airlie Beach, Australia
Monday, March 17, 2008

Arrived in Airlie Beach on Saturday afternoon after a four and a half hour Coach trip down the East coast of Northern Queensland. I didnt realise quite how big Queensland is. I have now travelled about 10 or 11 hours on a coach down the east coast and I am still in North Queensland !!  A good thing here is most of the Backpacker accommodation run courtesy transport to pick you up from the Coach drop offs to take you to the accommodation. This place I have picked out of the Lonely planet. I have a nice room overlooking the swimming pool. It is quite a small place, but once again everyone seems very friendly.. It is about a 10 minute walk into the maion area of Airlie Beach. After browsing a few of the places offering Reef trips I book on one for tomorrow. They have been running today and will be running tomorrow, although the guy in the shop sais it will be a bit choppy !!!  Pizza for dinner and then a visit to a bottle shop and I heah back to the hostel. Have a drink in the bar which is outside, it is so warm at about 21.00, it seems that the temperature does not drop very much at night

How the other half live

. Room has air con and ceiling fan thank god!! Get chatting to a lad called Chris who is doing the reverse journey to me in Oz ( Sydney to Cairns ) He reckons that over the last two weeks he has had rain at some point most days, so I figure I have been lucky in comparison with the weather. Early night did not go to plan, as I think it was about 1.30am when I got to bed.

Got picked up for my trip at 08.00. Luckily I had the forsight to buy some fruit and yoghurts the night before, as felt I needed to eat something before getting on a Catamaran on choppy seas !!! The boat left about 08.30 and went full speed heading out to the Outer Reef. It did get very choppy at times, and although the seating area was partly enclosed we all still managed to get wet. Got out to the Reef at about 10.15. There were  lessons on using the masks etc for those of us that have never snorkelled before. Then we were in the water. Took me about 10 / 15 minutes to get used to the mask, and the fact that you cannot breath through your nose or you break the suction on the mask and get water in it. After that I seemed to get the hang of the mask and the breathing and was off !!! As I have never done anything like this before I did not know what to really expect, but I was amazed by the whole experience. The water was just crystal clear, I was also surprised as to how close to the water the coral comes to in areas

Sign

. You could actually stand on it if you tried ( although that is not allowed ) As for the fish, it was like swimming through a tropical fish tank. There were an awful lot of fish about too, and also got to see a couple of turtles. We had a good hour out in the water before we had to return to head to the Whitsundays for the next part of our day. We then had some more time in the water in a sheltered bay there, before moving onto another area, where we were for a couple of hours for a BBQ lunch and swimming/ snorkelling etc The bay where we had lunch had a small plane fly in and land on the water ( about a 10 seater ) I suppose that is the deluxe method to voew the Great Barrier Reef and Whitsunday Isles, but definitely worth considering I reckon!! Also got to do a 30 minute bush walk up to an observation point on the Witsundays, the beaches and seas just have that spectacular picture postcard look to them - what you would expect to find in Paradise!!

Before we left the bay, the skipper said he needed to catch his "tea" before we left. He put a prawn on a fishing line, it was then not in the water for more than 5 minutes and he had a large fish on the end of it!!! ( I think Mark and Norman need to fish here, even they would catch something!!! Sorry private joke !!!! )

About an hour from Airlie Beach it started to rain, it is amazing how quickly the weathercan change here - And it was so rough you could not stand or walk about

What a view, and it was overcast at that point !

. Managed to get a couple of nice big bruises on my arm by bashing into the side of the boat. But all in all a great day today. Certainly that is another one of the really big boxes ticked as to things I wanted to do on this trip. The reef was amazing, I enjoyed the snorkelling much more than I thought I would, so maybe can see the fascination a bit more with diving!!!
Have spent Monday doing nothing too much, other than laundry and reading my book, have found one that I cant out down ( Lee Child - Without Fail. Thanks Sis I think it was you that put me onto him !! )  Got a big coach journey tonight - 13 hours. Am heading down the coast to Hevey Bay ( still in Queensland though ) But now I have my book, and I have been able to reload with a couple of nicely doctored bottles of bitter lemon I am sure I will be able to sleep ok for a while at least !!

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Whitsunday Islands

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