Hey everyone, I hope you're all well. I've been having the MOST amazing time here. We left Magnetic Island on Monday and headed south to Airlie Beach. After spending a night here we went off on a 3 day boat trip around the Whitsunday Islands on a catamaran called Powerplay. It took us about 2 1/2 hours to reach our first stop, Hayman Island, where we spent the afternoon diving in the most beautiful waters. After our dive we hopped into the jacuzzi (!) to warm up then spent the evening chatting with the crew and other passengers. You're not going to believe this but our skipper was from Bishops Stortford! And he even went to Boys High as well!!! It was so weird. We stayed at Hayman Island for the night and Emma and I (very bravely) went for a night dive. I was so scared before we went in and Emma was a little hysterical, but once we were in there it wasn't so bad. There wasn't much to see as all the fish were asleep, but it was such an amazing experience. Luckily we didn't see any sharks as they come out at night and that would have been WAY too scary at night.

The next day we moved up to Hook Island where we dived again at Mantaray Bay which was just about the most incredible dive EVER. It was about a million times better then anything we saw when we dived from Cairns. There was so much coral of every colour and every sort, and zillions of fish. We then moved over to Luncheon Bay where I did another dive with one of the instructors while Emma had a bit of a rest. It was so different diving with just the two of us rather than a small group and we did lots of exploring and saw a ginormous fish that lived in a little cave. We went through loads of little passages which was quite scary cos I was so scared of knocking the coral but I managed not to kill anything on my way through them which I was pretty pleased about! After the diving we moved to Whitsunday Island and saw the famous Whitehaven Beach. I can't tell you how beautiful it was. It looks amazing in pictures but they're nothing compared to seeing it in real life. We then spent about 3 hours messing around on the white beaches taking lots of pictures and trying to spot the sharks and stingrays in the water. Unfortunately we couldn't go swimming without our wetsuits (which we'd annoyingly left on the boat) because of all the stingers, which was a shame, but we still managed to catch a bit of sun and admire the view.

We headed back up north between Hayman and Hook Island for the night where it was less windy, then in the morning went for ANOTHER dive, this time at 7am. The cold water woke me up pretty quickly! The visibility at the site wasn't as good as it had been at the others but we saw the cutest turtle and followed it for ages (poor thing!). After the dive we started back on our 2 1/2 hour journey back to Airlie Beach. We were really sad to leave the boat - everyone had been so nice and the crew were amazing as well and made it so much fun.

We met last night with some of the group from the boat at the bar at our hostel and had a great night and ended up going swimming in the lagoon nearby. We're heading off the Hervey Bay tonight on an overnight bus as it takes 13 HOURS!!!!! I'm not particularly looking forward to it but I've got my pjs in my bag so atleast I'll be a bit comfortable! From Hervey Bay we're going on a 3 day trip to Fraser Island where we'll spend the time in a group of 10 travelling in a 4WD around the island and camping, which will definitely be an experience. We've already stocked up on more insect repellent and are hoping (really really hoping) we don't come across anything too scary. Again, we won't be able to swim in the sea around the island (a recurring theme along the east coast!), this time because the waters are full of sharks - big sharks, that WILL eat you. There are apparently some really beautiful lakes on the island that you can swim in which should be shark and jellyfish free!

I hope you're all ok, and I apologise for bombarding you with huge emails every few days - there's just so much to tell you about! I'm really looking forward to Siobhan joining us in Brisbane (yey!), where we will start our journey down the Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast towards Sydney for Christmas and New Year.

Love always and take care,
Charlotte x