Avast ye landlovers...
Trip Start
Nov 11, 2007
1
6
26
Trip End
Feb 11, 2007
Airlie Beach,
Australia
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Now as you should be aware from my last entry I am now in Airlie Beach, the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands - where I'm going tomorrow.
To be honest this is just gonna be a quick update really cos we haven't done a lot since we got here yesterday as the rest of the week is gonna be action packed.
We got the ferry back over to the mainland and waited for a couple of hours at Townsville Ferry Terminal - which sells very nice outback pies by the way - for our greyhound bus to Airlie Beach. After getting on the bus we travelled down highway 1 for about 4 and a half/ 5 hours to get here! I basically looked out the window the whole way and this country and the scenery never fails to amaze me. One moment you're crossing a bridge over a completely dry river bed, and I don't mean small piddly little rivers either! Massive things that should be full and would be in england, but here the weather means they dry up and only flow at certain times of the year. In contrast to that you then pass into a region with lush tropical forests, rising up on the mountain sides all around you, full of greenery and massive expanses of trees. That's one thing I didn't expect about this country either, I expected it to be flat to be honest! How naive am I?!?
Anyway we arrived and checked into our hostel which is called airlie beach beaches backpackers. It's all part of the deal we booked with our hostel in magnetic island which is great. We paid off the balance for our trip and organised ourselves with check in details. In case I haven't already wrote this the deal included - 4 nights in airlie/hervey bay in beaches hostels, 3day/2night whitsunday sailing and 3day/2night fraser island trip all for about 250 quid or $599 AUD. We leave tomorrow morning to catch our boat which will take us around the best bits of the whitsundays which I'm really looking forward to as the pics I've seen apparently don't even begin to do it justice.
We decided in airlie to have a night out so when we'd eaten (me and catherine cooked a thai red curry and it was yum) we got ready and hit a few bars. Downside to this is this place is currently full of "schoolies", kids who have broken up from school for the summer holidays aged about 16,17 and they were everywhere. The place has lots of special deals going on for them so literally everywhere we went it was full of children!! So we decided to call it a night about 1am and went for pizza instead! Lol! Drama of the day includes catherine and jenna's room having bed bugs and them having to move (they couldn't fit us in the same room again so we're in pairs) twice as the 2nd room also had them! They've had to tumble dry all their stuff to get rid of them! They weren't impressed as you can imagine. Also a bloke running around and knocking on everyone's dorm door at about 5am this morning which I slept through completely! He was even kickin the doors apparently. However a girl in my room has since found out not only has he been kicked out but he's in a police cell for drunk and disorderly lol!! His fault. I just can't believe I didn't hear it cos he was really noisy they said! Mel didn't hear it either!
Right I'm cooking tonight then I've gotta pack for the whitsundays! Can only take my little backpack so need to pack as little as possible - which I always find a challenge!
Lots of love to everyone and I'll be in touch again when we're back from sailing wooop! Hopefully will take some gorgeous pictures too! Can't wait!
Love Smiffy xxxxxxx
