After Fraser Island and the amazing adventure I had there I took a bus to Hervey Bay (with Greyhound this seemed to be the only way to get to Airlie Beach without an overnight stay in Brisbane) where I planned on stowing my stuff in the bus station until my 855p bus, and tooling around town, checking things out. Hervey Bay is the other departure spot to go to Fraser Island. Silly me didn't realize all of Oz shuts down on Sundays. So I show up at 2p, realize the bus station (a tiny little shop) is closed and I have to sit on the benches outside until 855p. :) Love my life. I couldn't even take all my crap with me if I'd wanted to eat, so luckily I made not one but TWO, PB&J sandwiches. So I sat there for 7 hours and ate my sandwiches, read my crappy book, and slowly put on more and more layers. Ended up with a long sleeve shirt on, another long sleeve sweater type dealio, my hoodie, my scarf and my knee high socks and tennies. Still cold. Always am. Finally the bus came and I threw some bows to make sure I was the first on, picked my seat and passed out. It wasn't actually that uncomfortable. I was surprised. Don't get me wrong, sleeping with your knees in your chest isn't bad, but we weren't picking people up so you could stretch across the aisle and be safe for the most part.
I got to Airlie Beach at 940a but couldn't check in to the hostel and get a room until 1p. Stumbled around for a bit, did some interneting and then finally got to go have a shower! After that, met another roommate, Jack, who was on my boat the next day so we hung out, went next door to the bar for jugs of beer and chilled. The next day Jack and I decided that two boxes of goon should probably suffice for the two of us for three days. After lazing around and eating the most amazing Greek food, we practically had to run to the meeting point for the boat, not realizing it was so far away. When we got there, we checked in and they took us down to the boat. Before we got on we had to give up our flip flops and shoes...and our boxes of goon, but only so they could put our names on them and put them in the eskies for later. Then we got assigned beds and had our informational meeting about only putting the 3 P's down the toilet, how we were only getting a 30 second shower, ONCE, and we could only use shower gel for it...and then we got to go to the top deck.
Luckily the weather was GREAT and so we all sat on deck enjoying the sun and breeze. Six volunteers put up the sails and we went sailing. Right when we were getting hungry Mel, the cook, brought us some nachos. When we had gone far enough for the first day, we had the option of going onto one of the islands and drinking some beers. That's where I saw my first Curlie (not sure on the spelling...can't find it on google.) Its quite large...looks like an overgrown baby bird. They're about knee high. Crazy looking.
Then we got back to the boat and Mel said, 'Dinner's served...girls go first.' Music to a fat kid's ears! I had thirds that night...but only because Mel was going to throw away the rest of the chicken if nobody was going to eat it and I couldn't let it go to waste! So I ate it....and was sooooo full for a while. Disgusting. But worth it. Then we hung out on the deck drinking goon and socializing. I met a couple funny English girls traveling together, Mary and Anna. Jack and I hung out with them. You could see the stars so well from the boat since there were no lights. Saw a few shooting stars as well. The milky way looked like it was just out of reach, it was so gorgeous.
In the morning our captain, Gary, started up the boat at 6a and we started moving towards the island that had Whitehaven Beach on it. It was something else to see the sun rise over the ocean. Probably one of the most beautiful things I've seen in a long while. We got to the beach at 8a and had to be back to the tinny (the smaller boat that shuttled us between the island and the sailing boat) at 11a. So we had almost 4 hours on the beach. The sand is 98% silica so it's good for brushing your teeth (which I did twice!), polishing jewelry, exfoliating, of which I did my face, hands and feet. I couldn't do much more as I had on my trendy and fashionable stinger suit, so that we didn't get stung by the jelly fish that are in the waters up North. Kinda scary thinking about it though.
Luckily, being there so early we had the beach to ourselves! Jack and I raced down there to get snaps of the beach looking pristine before there were towels and footprints all over it. You probably had to be there, but at one point, Mary and Anna, sitting about 10 feet from us, had this massive black bee (?) that wouldn't leave them alone. It mostly focused on Anna. By that time the beach had quite a large group of people on it, and she couldn't get away from it. She got up and ran around screaming and swatting at it for a good...30 seconds. It was the most hilarious thing I'd ever seen and practically the whole beach was laughing at her. Epic. When we got in the tinny, Ben, one of the deck hands, told us to look for turtles in the water. We saw quite a few surfacing, it was pretty cool. We left afterwards, and moved on to the spot where we were going to snorkel for the day. Jack and I paired up as snorkel buddies. Ben was waiting in the tinny for us if we wanted to get out early, and he also had a bucket of fish food. If we got close enough he'd throw fish food on us and the fish would swarm around your face getting at the food. It was hard to keep still and not freak out. Haha. But it was pretty cool.
At one point Jack had to fix his mask and afterwards he pointed to his toe that he'd scraped on a rock and it was BLEEDING a little bit. I was like OMG, WE'RE GONNA GET EATEN BY A SHARK!! But luckily that didn't happen, but I did think I might want to get out at that point. We stayed in the water for maybe an hour or so. It was really cool. The water was really clear and we got to see massive fish. I LOVE snorkeling! When we were back near the tinny, Ben threw fish food on Jack and as my ears were out of the water I could hear Jack screaming into his snorkel freaking out about the fish swarming and I just started laughing, and the crinkling of my face made water seep into my mask so I couldn't see and then I inhaled a ton of water so that I was choking and laughing and couldn't see and was grasping for the side of the tinny. So funny to hear a dude freak out like that. As much as I was freaked out too!
After snorkeling we got back on the boat, had some lunch, and went to a sand bar dealio. Jack and I took a walk across water knee deep to another part of land, like a really small island and it felt like we were walking on water. It was quite long so it looked like it coulda been deep. We missed the tug-o-war game but were around to lay out and drink goon. After dinner we drank more goon and hung out. In the morning we got to snorkel again if we wanted but Jack and Sven and I decided to just jump off the side of the boat for a while doing dives and stuff. I chickened out a few times at doing a back flip off the side....damnit! :) Such a wuss sometimes! Then we headed back to Airlie Beach to go home. :( Nobody wanted to go home. We all wished it could have lasted for a week at least. On the way back we got to sail again and I was one of the volunteers to help put up the sails. It was sooo hard. We had these three pedal type things, with two people facing each other on each one, so 6 people, and when Ben said toward the back of the boat we pedaled that way, and towards the front we went the other way. When the sails got near the top the tension was so hard! I'm pretty sure that's why my back hurt the next day. Ick. The boat got to a 30 degree angle while we were sailing, with all of us on the high side, of course, but it was kinda scary. I had to get my sweater at one point and it was really disorienting to be down under when the boat was listing to one side so bad. Funny trying to get around and not fall over.
The whole trip exceeded my expectations. It was worth every penny I paid for it and I would love to do it again! Anyone willing to lend me $400? Thank you please. Food was amazing, people were great, crew was really nice, adventures were wonderful. Couldn't have asked for more. And did I mention I hadn't washed my hair in 3 days...ick. But living in my bathing suit and nothing else for 3 days was heaven!
Had a boat party that night with the people on the boat, had cheap meals and beer. Got to meet up with Matt again after his sailing trip. Was nice. Left Airlie for Cairns the next morning at 7a and with 60 (!!!!) mozzy bites! SIXTY!! And 40 of those were on my legs...the rest on my arms and back. WTF? How does that even happen?? One night in the hostel and I'm eaten alive. Crazy.
No comments:
Post a Comment