Land Down Under

Sail away, sail away....

This is going to be a fairly short post, only because I am busy studying for exams. I just thought it needed updating. The sailing trip to the Whitsunday Islands was AMAZING! The first day, Jen and I met two German girls who were in our room at the Koala Hostel in Airlie Beach. It turned out that they were both on our boat too! We went to dinner with them the first night to get to know them. They just finished high school and are doing a tour of Australia (with a little work in there too) before starting college next year. The next morning, we got up nice and early, checked out, and walked to the marina to board the Summertime. It is a wooden sailboat built in the 1930s or 1940s. There were three crew members: a skipper, a dive instructor/anchor-dropper/everything having to do with sails- guy, and a girl who described herself as our "mum" for the next three days. Her job was basically cooking, cleaning, looking after us, etc. There were about 12 passengers, and the German girls, Jen, and I were the youngest. The others were around mid- to late- twenties, up to 50's and even one grandma. Most of the passengers seemed to be British, for whatever reason. Jen and I were the only Americans. The first day we went to Whitehaven Beach, which National Geographic rated the number one beach in the world. I have to agree with them. The sand is pure white, and really soft. It felt like walking on velvet. It wasn't even hot, even though the day was a scorcher. Before we got to the beach though, we climbed to a lookout that gave the most amazing view of the inlet behind the beach. The colors constantly change with every tide, because the sand that gets washed in through a narrow passageway changes. The pictures really don't do it justice. We were allowed to spend 3 hours total on the island, and Jen and I took the opportunity to lay out and tan. No worries, Arbonne made its usual appearance, and by the end of the trip I was a nice brown color without too much red. Only a little on spots I missed. Anyway, the next day we woke up bright and early and went kayaking around the inlet we had anchored in for the night. We had to wear full-length wetsuits (only up to our waists, because we would've died of the heat) because unfortunately, stinger season has just begun in Queensland. After wriggling into the very uncomfortable, very hot thing, Jen and I didn't even go swimming. We did end up having to go to the bathroom really badly by the time we got to the end of the inlet, though, which was a real problem because it took us around an hour or more to kayak there from the boat. Needless to say, we high-tailed it back to the sailboat in about 40 minutes (good arm workout!). I think Ezza and Chriso (the dive instructor and skipper, respectively) had a good chuckle watching us trying to rip off the wetsuits as fast as possible. Later that day, (after sailing to a new location on the other side of Whitsunday Island), I went diving. Since I was the most experienced diver and also the one who has gone most recently, I was paired off with the older woman who had just finished her PADI course two days before, and put in the back of the group. My first thought was, greeeeat. I'll get eaten and my buddy'll freak out. Luckily she did okay, and didn't freak out or anything, which I was impressed by. And there weren't any sharks. In fact, in all the diving I've done, all over the world, I've only seen one shark, and turtles once. Maybe I'm a natural repellent? Back to the dive, the visibility was crap. In all fairness to the reef (since this is the Great Barrier Reef, after all), it was the inner reef, and the corals were spawning, so the water was just murky from that and from runoff from the islands. The corals were definitely nicer here than the outer reef, but I think the fish were better at the outer reef, and overall I'd definitely recommend the outer reef. You just can't compare it to anywhere else. Anyway, it was so murky that at one point Ezza was trying to get pictures of everyone holding a sea cucumber (apparently I'm not the only one with an affinity toward them!), and since we were all "standing" on the sandy bottom in that spot, even more sediment was churned up. It got to the point where I couldn't see my hand if I stuck it out in front of me. Luckily it was clearer about 5 feet above where we were standing, and we all regrouped quickly. I have to say other than that, it was a pretty uneventful dive. I was (as usual) the last one down there, and came up with 80 bars left. Ezza was impressed. He said he usually makes a bet with the certified divers that he can come up with at least 50 bars more than they do, and if he loses, he'll buy them a drink of their choice. He would've had to buy me and another woman (who came up with 60 bars left) drinks! Jen also tried scuba diving for the first time- she said she liked it, but had to concentrate on breathing too much to really enjoy it. We were all pretty pooped by the time dinner came around, and could hardly keep our eyes open by the time dessert and the picture slideshow were over. I think I was dead asleep by 8pm. The next morning we moved to Hook Island, which is the second largest island in the Whitsundays (after Whitsunday Island, of course). I went diving again, and I'm sad to say it was not a pleasant dive. As soon as I got down there, my mask started fogging like crazy, and also started leaking (don't know how that happened, because it fit my face when I checked it on the boat). When the water got to the level of my eyeballs I had had enough, so I went and tugged on Ezza's fin and signed the problem out to him. He suggested a mask swap, and then ripped his off his face and handed it to me. I have to admit, taking off my mask 30 feet underwater and putting on and clearing a new one freaked me out a bit. Okay a lot. I've never had to do that before, save when I took my PADI course when I was twelve (and even then, we only did that drill in a pool). The rest of the dive was uneventful, except I was so happy that I could see again! It was a bit clearer than the previous day, but visibility still wasn't very good. There was a rather large batfish that kept following us around, and Ezza had brought a bottle of bread with him, so after a while he had an enormous school of fish all around us. The school was so dense that I could feel fish bumping into my legs, arms, head, and I reached out and touched a lot of them. They didn't seem to care; they just wanted Ezza's bread. It was pretty cool. Even after freaking out with the mask swap, I still came up with 80 bars of air left-- more than the other two people who managed to have enough air to stay til the end of the dive too. After lunch, we sailed back to Airlie Beach. That night all the younger travelers met up for dinner, which was fun because it was Halloween, so all the pub staff and a lot of the tourists were dressed up too. Jen and I went back fairly early because we were still exhausted from being in the sun all day, and we had gotten used to going to bed early. The next day we spent being lazy by the lagoon, because, just like Cairns, there's really only mudflats there, no beach. I'm thinking that all of Queensland only has mudflats. Anyway, the lagoon was pretty nice, and it wasn't too sunny or hot so it was nice to just lay out and read. That night we treated ourselves to a nice dinner since it was the last night, and I got rack of lamb! It was really good, and (if you can believe it) cheaper than getting fish! Of course, I am in Australia. They have a lot of sheep. A lot. Like, more than people. I digress. The next day we left around lunchtime, and the next day I got up at 7 and wrote an entire 2000 word paper on schizophrenia. I finished it at 2pm, two hours before it was due. After I ran to hand it in, I took the opportunity to run errands in the city, and felt like I accomplished a lot. Since then, I've just been typing up my notes and getting them all together, and tomorrow I'll start cramming as much information about environmental psychology, dangerous earth, and Australian biology as can possibly fit in the small, empty space between my ears. It'll all be over in 8 days! Wish me luck!

posted by Christina @ 9:42 AM