The overnight bus deposited me in Airlie beach at around 6:30am and already the Farmer's Market by the beach was almost ready to open. I put my luggage into storage and set about exploring. The beach is fairly uninspiring, but you can't go in the sea anyway due to the 'stinger' jellyfish, so everyone swims in the lagoon - a manmade swimming pool near the shore. Also, they have camels instead of donkeys. Very exciting. I pootled round the market for a little while (which turned out to be a great place to get breakfast), then a little way along the coastal walk, then around the few shops on the main street. When the time came, I went and checked in to the boat and the sailing adventure began! The only minor hiccup was that they had my name down as 'Josh Slant'. Obviously I don't enunciated my name clearly enough over the phone. When I was applying for jobs post-University, there was one I had to call up to get an application form sent to me. It arrived addressed to 'Jyoti Dante'. You wouldn't have thought it'd be such a difficult name to get. Hey ho.
Airlie Beach is certainly a nice enough place but a bit of a one trick pony. It's pretty much centred on getting people out to the Whitsundays and there's not a great deal else there.
The boat I was on was called the Tongarra and it was a twenty-four berth, bright red catamaran. From the moment we set off, the boat was constantly rocking on the waves. I imagine that's what gives some people motion sickness but it just had a soporific effect on me. I spent a good deal of the first afternoon napping in the shade from the sail. As the weather was good, even at night we slept on deck under the stars. It was great. We visited Whitsunday Island itself and spent a morning playing on Whitehaven Beach. The sand is, well, white and incredibly fine. Apparently it was used to make the glass in the Hubble telescope lens due to its purity. It was also pretty much the nearest thing I'm going to get to a white Christmas. Heh. You had to don a stinger suit before heading into the sea due to the jellyfish, but I had a pleasant splash about anyway. Most of the rest of the few days were either spent on the boat or snorkelling around the islands. The diversity and sheer volume of life down there is utterly stagering. If there is a god and if s/he did create sea life on the forth day, the designs were undoubtably left to primary school children armed with more colouring pencils than they knew what to do with. There are fish covered in unlikely patterns in every more unlikely colour combinations, and that's even before you look at the frankly bizarre colours and shapes of the coral. Most excitingly of all, on the morning of the third (and last) day, I found myself swimming with turtles. I'm not totally sure what type, but I was swimming along with three of them at one point, before they each headed off to do their own thing. It was utterly magical. The absolute best thing about turtles is that they eat jellyfish, so they were particularly good to have in the water with me. I know from the information centre at Mon Repos that, after hatching and getting to the sea, scientists don't actually know what happens to turtles for their first fifteen years. They currently assume that, and I quote, they're "off on secret turtle business". I suspect they're in cahoots with the dolphins and, when I saw them, they were actually trying to send me a message along the lines of 'so long and thanks for all the molluscs'...
Back on dry land, I headed over to Backpackers By The Bay - another great hostel - for my first shower in three days. I spent a relaxing evening there (to recover from all that taking it easy on the boat) and was back on the Greyhound bus a little after 9am next morning...
