Chrissy's Trip to Australia -- Part Two

After saying goodbye to Geoff and Jen, Chrissy and I flew into Hamilton Island Airport, located on an island just off the mainland of Australia. After we landed, we took a 45 minute ferry ride over to the mainland, to a town called Airlie Beach where we were staying. We were staying at a hostel in the town area, so a bus picked us up from the marina and drove us to the hostel. We spent a majority of our time in Airlie at the lagoon. The lagoon is a man-made pool that resembles a beach. It is surrounded by sand, and has a gradual entrance into the water. Swimming is not allowed off of Airlie because of a deadly type of jellyfish that swims in the north eastern coastal waters. The first day we were in Airlie, we didn’t arrive in the area until afternoon, so we spent the little time we had left of that day at the lagoon, until it got too cold and we headed back to the hostel. We used the hostel kitchen to live off toast and jam and nutella all week, so of course, that’s what we had for dinner. The first night, we were pretty tired from traveling and decided to just hang out around the hostel and have a few beers.

Airlie Beach

The second day we spent pretty much the entire day at the lagoon. It was a really nice day out, so we had no issues spending the day laying out in the sun. We finally got a little sick of eating nothing but bread and nutella since we left for Sydney, so we stopped at the supermarket and bought some ramen! Haha, much more exciting, right? We spent the afternoon trying to plan a day trip for the following day. The Whitsunday Islands are a group of 70 islands, and one of their biggest tourists draws are sailing trips that go out and tour a few islands for a couple days. These trips are pretty pricey, so Chrissy and I decided to make a day trip out of it, rather than 3 days. We picked out a trip and then went back to the lagoon until the sunset. That evening we met a bunch of people who were staying at the hostel, and hung out with them all night. We met people from all over who were traveling up the coast, and we had a blast hearing all of their stories. We met people from Denmark, England, Canada, Sweden, and Germany. Although we had all just met, it felt like we were instantly friends. As a group, we went down to a bar called Phoenix to celebrate one of Canadian girls birthdays!

The next morning was our day trip. We woke up at 7 am to get our things together, eat some breakfast in the hostel kitchen, and get to the stop to catch our bus. The bus picked us up at 7:45, and we headed down to Abel Marina to start our day. We were taking a catamaran around three different islands within the Whitsunday Islands. While traveling to our first stop, we were given coffee or tea and a morning snack. It took us about 45 minutes to get to Hook Island. At each island, the tour had different things planned. While at Hook Island, we stood on the pier and watched the staff throw bread to feed the fish, and then hopped on a glass bottom boat to see some coral. It was a bit hard to see out of boat, but we were able to get some really cool glimpses of the coral. We then got back on to our catamaran and drove to another part of Hook Island, where we were able to snorkel. This snorkeling was a bit different to my trip out to the Great Barrier Reef in Cairns at the beginning of my trip. The coral wasn’t as bright, but there were instructors on little boats driving around, throwing out food all around us so that tons of fish would be swarming us. It was so cool! They even gave us bread to hold to feed the fish under the water.

Hook Island

After snorkeling we got back on the boat and headed to our second stop, Whitehaven Beach which is on Whitsunday Island. Whitehaven Beach has to be one of the most beautiful places in the world. The sand is nearly pure white silica, and the beach stretches about 7km. The water is so incredibly blue and the sand so white, it’s absolutely amazing. While on our way, we were served a really great buffet lunch, with amazing fruits. When we arrived at Whitehaven Beach, we were given a few hours to just relax on the beach. Chrissy and I had a lot of fun taking silly model pictures and playing with the soft sand, we barely even laid out in the sun!

Whitehaven Beach

Our third stop was at Daydream Island. This was our stop to enjoy a really great resort that takes up almost the entire island. This resort is also home to some of the largest man-made coral reefs in the world. They had these little salt water ponds full of coral, fish, sting rays and a few sharks. Chrissy ordered a drink, and we layed out by the pool, walked around the resort, and checked out the reef ponds. After an hour or so, we all loaded back onto our bus and went back to the marina.

Daydream Island

The next day we had almost the entire day before we had to catch our flight at 6 pm. We checked out of our hostel and went to lay next to the bay where all the sailboats were. Chrissy and I both fell asleep, and by the time we woke up, we only had time for lunch before we had to get to the bus stop to head to the airport. We flew out of a local airport which was incredibly small, two gates in all, and finally made it back to Brisbane after a full, exhausting week of traveling.

Part Three Soon!