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Airlie Beach has a stunning beach and tropical clear waters. Unfortunately due to tiny jelly fish the size of your fingernail that are completely see through and can kill you in a matter of hours, your not aloud to swim without stinger suits. Instead of the sea the town has a lagoon ( basically a outdoor swimming pool). For the first day we spent all our time here as the heat was unbearable. we also booked ourselves onto the a Whitsundays tour, starting the next day and lasting 4 days.
We boarded a boat worryingly called "Spank Me" and chucked our 4 day supply of Goon wine into the large coolers. We would be living on this small boat, no bigger than 20 metres long with about 18 other people and crew for 4 days, including sleeping below decks!
The first day was pretty short as we spent most of the time getting out to the Whitsunday Islands. We saw an Island named Sid Island due to the story of how Captain Cook fired his dead dog sid out of the cannon only for him to land on that island. We then watched the sunset over the sea and turned below deck for some sleep pretty early on.
It was hell down there! The temperature below deck was sky high and the only fan down there was at the other side of the boat to me. I eventually grabbed a few hours before our early morning start at sunrise. The skipper of the boat was way too enthusiastic for the early mornings, having been up before sunrise to watch the animals swimming around the boat as he did every morning. In the early light we caught glimpses of loads of animals including dolphins, turtles and sea cows.
After breakfast we went to the famous Whithaven Beach, the whitest and purest beach in the world due to high levels of silicon. Supposedly the sand on the beach is so fine that you can use it for exfoliating stuff on your face. It is also used to make the best glass known to man and was used in the Hubble telescope. We took a walk up to a viewpoint of the beach where we could see how spectacular it was and finished our time there swimming in the sea, of course with stinger suits on.
In the afternoon we went out to the outer barrier reef to do some diving. We had one free dive included on our trip which was pretty good but unfortunately due to all the storms the week before the visibility was shocking. You could barely see the person in fronts flippers! That evening i witnessed the best joint sunset and moon rise i have ever seen. The colours were incredible and you could watch it right down to the horizon. The moon rise was spectacular as well as i dont think i've ever seen it before, it's normally up there before the sun sets.
The following day was set aside for snorkelling, and i was determined to see a turtle up close in the water. After seeing some really good stuff in the morning including several reef sharks and all types of fish i gave up and went back to the boat for a rest. Just as i had taken my stinger suit off and sat down i heard a cry from out at sea shouting turtles! I turned into a speed dresser and was fully kitted out in less than 30secs. I swam as fast as i could and luckily they were still there. Two turtles were fighting over a huge jellyfish. They would hold it in their mouths then use their flippers to cut sections off and swallow it. I watched these amazing creatures for ages, constantly getting stung by the dead tenticals floating in the water. It wasn't painful stings more itchy but definately worth it. After they had swam off i returned to the boat only to find a large school of huge half a metre long fish swimming underneath it. I dove down and swam with them for a bit before finally getting back on the boat. It was an amazing day of snorkelling! We spent the rest of that day heading back to the islands. That night i decided not to stand for the heat below deck again like i had the previous two nights and headed on to the outer deck for some cool see breeze, sleeping under the stars. Unfurtunately this night was pretty cold and i ended up crawling back inside half way through the night. Oh well, at least i got some sleep!
The next day was our last and we saw a sunken tourist ship that had been dashed up onto the rocks the week before in the huge storms. We also went to a cool island with a huge sand spit and did some more snorkelling there although the visibility here was worse than out at sea. We finished the tour in the afternoon, said bye to all the friends we made and headed off the following morning to the tiny tourist town of 1770, and yes that is the name of the town.
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