Sailing in the Whitsundays

Whithaven Beach

Hey everyone-- Sorry we haven't written on here for so long! It's

hard when you have to pay for internet more often than not, but we're going to try to at least get caught up :-) After Fraser Island, we hung out in Rainbow Beach for a couple days and then headed up to Airlie Beach. Airlie Beach is a cool little beach town that is the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands.

The Whitsundays are a gorgeous group of 74 islands in the heart of the Great Barrier Reef. We booked onto a boat called the Apollo because some of our friends had been on it and said it was great, and because it included one free dive. There were 24 travelers (mostly backpackers and all really cool) and 4 awesome crew members on the boat--a female captain :-), skipper, chef, and dive instructor. The chef, Molly, was amazing--we had heard the food was good on the boat so we had high expectations, buy they were quickly exceeded. There were two of us on the boat that requested no red meat and one strict vegetarian (John was not one of them since he decided he wanted the steak we had heard about). I am also allergic to onions, and the chef was great about making separate meals for those of us "veggos" and making sure mine didn't have onions. She was so awesome!

Our trip was 3 days and 2 nights and consisted of sailing through the islands, getting out and enjoying beautiful beaches, and diving! We ended up doing the dive that was included and paying for an additional 2 dives-- one during the day and one night dive! The night dive was crazy-- I was really scared at first because it was so dark, but once we got down to the bottom, it was really amazing and peaceful. We had waterproof flashlights and you could only see where you pointed your light. The part of the reef we were on was a series of coral caves and caverns, and we had a great time swimming through all them. John and I were the only ones on our boat brave enough to dive at night :-), so it was cool to have the dive instructor all to ourselves. During all the dives we saw amazing fish and beautiful coral. We also saw a big sea turtle while we were snorkeling on one of the islands. Overall, we had a really great trip! I highly recommend hitting up the Whitsundays to anyone traveling in oz and definitely the boat Apollo :-)