Bye Bye NZ, Hello Australia!
After Fiji we returned to NZ for a little over a week so that Eero could get his new teeth, finish up physio and see the orthopedic surgeon one last time. Then on April 1st we hopped a plane over the Tasman Sea to Brisbane (aka Brisvegas), Australia. From there we hopped another plane to Proserpine airport and then caught a bus into Airlie Beach. Airlie beach is the gateway town to the Whitsunday Islands. The Whitsundays are a group of 74 islands bordered by the Great Barrier Reef and form the longest offshore island chain on Australia’s coastline.
We spent the first day in Airlie Beach just hanging out and gathering supplies since there isn’t much to do there. Although they do have a nice waterfront trail and a large lagoon for swimming. The main reason we were there was to go on a 3 day 2 night sailing trip around the islands. We went out a 66ft sailing ketch called Enid, with 12 other travellers and 3 crew. We started early on the 1st day and sailed between Hook Island and Whitsunday Island out to Border Island where we did some snorkelling. After that we sailed down to Whitehaven beach on Whitsunday Island for some appetizers while watching the sunset. Whitehaven Beach has to be the prettiest beach I have ever been on. It is about 7km long where they have the whitest fine silica sand contrasted with the crystal clear aqua coloured water. Absolutely beautiful!
We anchored that night just off the beach so that the following morning we could go back to the beach and hike up to a lookout point to see the beach from a different vantage point. Still beautiful! On our way back out to the boat we saw a huge turtle swimming at the surface. We then sailed up to the northern end of Hook Island where we had the opportunity to go scuba diving. It wasn’t the best dive since the visibility was only about 5m but we did see lots of nice coral, a hawksbill turtle and a small stingray.
We woke up to a very windy day on the 3rd day so we had a nice sail back to Airlie Beach. Before sailing back we had one last snorkel and swim. There were also some big batfish swimming around the boat right at the surface which was pretty neat to see. We had a great time on our sailing trip and couldn’t have asked for better weather.
Today we left Airlie Beach and flew back to Brisbane where we are staying with some relatives of Eero’s, Rick and Liz and their 4 kids (aged 5 and under).
Well I guess we are up to date on our posts finally, now we just need to catch up on our photos.
