If my birthday present to myself was a sailing trip in the whitsundays, then I guess Mike's birthday treat to himself was a stay at Hamilton Island resort :-)
Hamilton Island is the biggest of the Whitsunday Islands, with an airport, a marina (the port) and a fully self-contained island hotel resort. Normally, I am not a fan of resorts or package-type holidays, but I have to say, that on this particular occasion, it was a pleasant contrast.
We arrived on Hamilton Island following our return from the epic sailing trip, and after enjoying an extended and hot shower, went for a stroll through the main part of the resort centre and the marina. Overambitious, we headed out to climb up to a lookup point, only to succumb to our fatigue, and return to the side of the resort pool. We were both suffereing from "landsickness", a common side effect that you tend to experience after spending 2 days on a boat. This feels a bit like being drunk without actually having drunk anything: slight problems with balance and walking in a straight line, and when you lie down, everything's turning.So that evening, we didn't do much.
The best part of the stay on Hamilton Island was that our accommodation was set amidst a small forest of rainforesty-type trees, in particular palm tree. This gave you a bit of a sense of being in the middle of a jungle. This sensation was certainly reinforced at dawn & dusk, when the "jungle" became alive. Mostly quiet during the night, you'd be woken up in the early hours of the morning by the orchestrated songs of birds, in particular (very loud) cockatoos, the main inhabitants of the trees. The cockatoos were also very abundant around the swimming pool at dusk, always looking out for the leftovers of the last customers' pina colada...At dusk, a different species of winged little fellas took over the nightsky : bats! As soon as the sun had set, a huge nr of them suddenly appeared on the fading blue sky and gathered up for their nightly excursions. They were pretty big and quite scary!
The next morning, we didn't wake up just to the sound of the jungle, because it was slightly blurred by the sound of raindrops tapping on the roof of our bungalow. At first I thought it's just one of those tropical rainshowers...but unfortunately, it turned out to be raining intermittently pretty much all day. That was particularly disappointing for Mike, as it was his last day in the Whitsundays, and his 2nd last day in Australia. Anyway, we ventured out to the beach to do sth where it didn't matter that you got wet - more snorkeling! Unfortunately, the visibility both under- and over water wasn't great.
Mike was determined to make the most out of his last day and rented out a kayak, then a sort of surfboard that you paddled on, while I retreated to the bungalow with my book.
The good thing about rain in the tropics is that it's warm and never lasts for very long. So the next day it was sunny again, but for Mike, time to fly back to Melbourne and Munich. I accompanied him to the airport and from there took a ferry to Airlie Beach, from where I was catching a bus to Cairns later that day.
