Airlie Beach

After getting a little stuck on Magnetic Island we headed off on our 2nd Oz bus to Airlie Beach. Our driver named Pistol Pete was quiet and recovering from a hangover we preferred this to the previous driver Diesel, who's incessant use of the word awesome and favourite saying "cool bananas, no dramas", had scarred us.


We went straight though to Airlie, seven guys on a 52 seater coach!?! Watched Borat on route and arrived early evening. That nights entertainment was Jelly Wrestling. About 10 women from different countries went at it in a jelly pit trying to rip off bands from each other for a prize of 500 bucks. It was strange to watch especially when the aussie girls were practically beating each other up for the money. However it was pretty funny.

The next day was our venture onto the Whitsundays and sailing around the islands. We departed at 430 and vegan introducing ourselves to all the passangers, we had Italians, germans, english, dutch, canadian, israely and a belgian all on our boat, we lucked out though as everyone was easy to get along with, and the best thing was i didnt get seasick!!

Our first destination was blue pearl bay, where we moored and were all at awe by being right next to Ivana Trumps million dollar yacht 'Grand Finale'. We thought about taking the dingy over to say hi but decided the party was better on our boat. Beer and goon was consumed late into the night. (GOON - the aussie nickname for very cheap and disgusting tasting wine) In the morning with everyone suffering from a nasty goonover we headed for a dive in the bay. Me and rastrick buddied up and heading off along the reef. The visibility is no where near as good as Thailand but we did find a cool empty clamshell.

After this we began sailing again and headed around to a place called whitehave and it is possibly the most idylic white sand beach i have ever seen. Sting rays and sharks swam in the waters but none of them will harm you, unless youstep on them.

That evening we continued on the beer and goon escapades, included this time were german drinking games and a whitsundays races card game run by the loudest yorkshireman ever known. The next morning we headed to another bay to do some snorkeling, the whole time weve been snorkelling around the whitsundays weve had to wear stinger suits as there are two types of deadly jellyfish. While snorkelling this time i got a sharp electric like shock to my lip, jellyfish sting! At first i started to have a brown stinger suit moment, then realised that the pain had gone and i was fine! It was also at this point that the load yorkshireman spotted a 2m shark come out of a cloud of sand, the only words that came out of his mouth for the next hr were expletives. Green missed this little trip as his Goonover was too bad!

In the evening we sailed back and all met up in a bar called Reefo's, drinking with the crew and captain into the wee hours.