Whitsundays Islands!

So after yet another short work week, (this one is an all-time record of one-day.. Thursday). However, to my credit, I was on my deathbed Monday and Tuesday, and well Wednesday, I got a little over anxious with my health and tried to get up and going, only to find out that after breakfast, I was ready to pass out for another 6 hours. So since my last marathon post, I've been feeling better, still a little cough here or there, but definitely a major improvement. Per the reccomendation of my girlfriend and parents, I did go to the doctor to find out that I had a Upper Respiratory Tract Infection, which I think is a fancy word for moderate cold. Regardless, I was put on some medication for a while, but I am like new now.

So Thursday I had a very productive day in the office, which I should have considering it was my only 7 hours of work of last week. But it didn't last long since we left on Friday for Proserpine, Qld, which is where the Whitsundays Coast Airport is located. This past weekend trip was trip 3 of 3 for our small group package. The other trips included Fraser Island and Noosa River Everglades. But this trip was by far the grand prize of them all, a 2 day 2 night sailing trip to the Whitsundays Islands and the inner Great Barrier Reef. So we arrived on Thursday afternoon without much incident, and checked into our hostel.

We met up with a friend of ours from the program named Jason who was stationed up in Townsville for the summer. So the group grew to 4. Grabbed a drink in Airlie Beach, which is nortiously backpacker-ly, and apparently backpackers are supposed to like wet-t-shirt contests, because we were asked to go to at least 4, luckily, it isn't really the type of thing that we were into, so we opted to go to the local bar, grab a drink, and just relax without the added entertainment.

The next morning, we had time to get a proper breakfast (opposed to the last two weekends where our tour left around 7am or something earlier), so we took advantage of this , and I found some french toast and bacon which was absolutely spectacular. This is the first hot breakfast I'd had since I left the US as far as I remember. Wow, it was amazing.

After the breakfast, we checked in and commenced our boating trip.

So here you can see our ship, a 19-m "pocket maxi" boat which apparently had won quite a few races. It was a nice-yet-modest vessel. No such thing as private cabins on this thing, we all had beds that lined the lower deck, mine was about 1.5 feet wide by 7 feet long, and was an arm's length from the food-service bar and about two leg's length from the bathroom door. not exactly spacious, especially for the 22 people that would be on board.

But the four of us made the best of it! As you can see, we are drinking our classy boxed wine. To our credit, it was a Shiraz, which is a specialty of Australia! So back to more about the boat, there were only two main areas, the top deck, as seen below, which served as our living room during most of the day and into the evening. And the lower deck, where we slept, used the bathrooms, and got our food. I should also note that there was a shower, but none of us used it for the duration of the trip. I just got my first shower in the past 4 days about 40 minutes ago. It felt fabulous.

So its' quite amazing how fast time goes by when you're on a ship and not moving very fast (there wasn't much wind), but over the course of the 2 days 2 nights, we can sum up the trip in that we laidout on the deck and caught some sun, went to Whithaven beach, and went snorkeling to see some of the reef, but that's about it. Yet, those activities were all amazing in their own right, but I guess I am just trying to say the time went by soooo fast. The water and the wildlife were really awesome though, I think we were quite lucky. Even without the snorkeling, we were able to see dolphins, humpback whales, huge jellyfish, sea turtles, schools of tuna, and other fish in the water. While snorkeling, we saw all kinds of exotic fish and even hung out with a turtle for a little while.

The others on the boat were all of a good bunch, the usual suspects however. A majority of peoeple from the UK, a pair of Canadian couples (who played frisbee), a spainard, and a handful of german guys. We all got along just fine though.

Here's a shot from the beach where we set anchor on the 2nd night, we were able to see a very nice sunset over the waters.


I had to put up this shot just for kicks. Our flight today was 2 hours late getting into Proserpine, which was really annoying since I was supposed to have a frisbee game at 8:15pm (that's a little difficult when your plane gets to the gate in Brisbane at 6:45pm).... but regardless, this photo is a picture of the "waiting room" at Proserpine Airport, now I'm used to a small-town airport operation, but their "baggage claim" was a carport where they drive the lugage carts through, like a drive-in, and then you just pick your bag straight off the luggage cart. The waiting room is just as it looks, an outdoor courtyard with your typical airport seating. Hilarious.