Airlie Beach & The Whitsundays

No worries, I’m still alive. Airlie Beach and the Whitsundays were amazing and heaps of fun, but it’s also good to be back home in Melbourne.

We had a flight to MacKay, in northeastern Australia, on early Sunday morning. I wanted to have a relaxing, non-party weekend before that. On Friday we went to see Monsters vs. Aliens in IMAX, 3D movie theatre with the 3rd biggest screen in the world. It was amazing! The film actually feels so real that you feel like you can actually touch the pictures, although the film itself was pretty dumb :) One can only wonder what kind of medication the guy was on who wrote the story… Afterwards we went to Lygon street, ‘little Italy’ for dinner and later for a drink, so it was a relaxing evening.

On Saturday I was supposed crash at my friend's place, because there are no trains early in the morning to the city. However, she was going out to party. I told them that I’m definitely not up for it, otherwise I would miss the flight, like in Bangkok. But then my Californian buddy Ari called me, he had a flight to Brisbane early in the morning, so he had the same problem. So we decided to leave our stuff at Shanli's and go out with them. We went to Lounge and guess who was the last to leave and almost missed the flight - again!… I blame the bartender, who gave me this card that I could get free drinks with. At 5AM Shanli called me and told me to get my ass over to her place NOW or we would miss the flight :)

I have no recollection of the flight and in MacKay I was still quite drunk. We were going to catch a bus from the airport to Airlie Beach, the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands. First, we waited 2 hours for the bus. When it finally arrived, it was full and we couldn’t get in. The next bus was coming in 6 hours. Luckily, we weren’t the only ones who missed the bus. We got this German dude, David, to rent a car with us and drive us to Airlie. So everything worked out well and he wasn’t an axe murderer.

The next day we were going to jump on a boat and explore the dreamy Whitsundays on a 3 day sailing trip. At the meeting point we met 2 other Canadians (Airlie Beach was full of Canadians), and we hung out with them the rest of the vacation.

There were about 40 of us on board of Pride of Airlie, mostly Canadians, a few Americans and a few Europeans. It was a bit cloudy but still the islands looked amazing. The Whitsundays consist of 74 islands, of which only 6 are inhabited. So you really have the chance to find your own private tropical paradise there... :) Each of the islands is covered in rainforest and surrounded by white sandy beaches. There are also these exclusive expensive resorts for the rich and the famous with high security and you can only access them with a helicopter.

We stayed in South Molle Island, in this beautiful resort with a huge swimming pool, hot tub and a big bar. We weren’t allowed to take ANY drinks on the island. However, the guy from the crew advised us that we should take the drinks with us as long as we keep it discreet and don’t run around the island with goon casks (cheap wine) in our hands.

Well, we passed out after dinner, because we had been drinking all day on the boat (crazy Canadians!). The next day we had to wake up really early, with destination Whitehaven Beach that’s ranked as the 2nd best beach in the world. White silica sand and turquoise water. And finally the sun came out and we fell asleep on the beach. We woke up when it started pouring with rain and the boat came to pick us up.

But it was great fun swimming, drinking goon and dancing in the ocean while it was raining! That night we actually managed to stay up partying quite late. I remember the security guard giving me head massages all the time because I had this huge headache all night. And I ran into Ari, who was on his way up the east coast. Such a small world again, at the same time we happened to be at the same tiny island...

On the third day we went snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef. As I know that some of you retards haven’t even heard of it, although it’s as iconically Aussie as the Sydney Opera House or Ayers Rock, I can tell you, or Wikipedia can, that it is one of the world’s seven wonders, and the largest coral reef system in the world, stretching for 2,600 km over an area of approximately 344,400 square kilometers. It can even be seen from space, and it is the largest structure being made by living creatures. Anyway, the best place in the world to go diving.

We only saw a tiny part of it when we went snorkeling. But OMG it was so AMAZING!!! Rainbow-colored fish, clownfish, neon-colored fish, and the most awesome corals in the world! They were pink, orange, bright blue, so amazing, words can’t even describe… I got so carried away with snorkeling that I almost missed the boat and was left alone in the little island with only turtles as my companion. 

The rest of the week we spent in Airlie Beach, party town. One short main street is filled with pubs, shops, restaurants, palm trees and clubs. We couldn’t swim in the ocean at Airlie Beach because it was stinger season and we should have worn stinger suits. But there was the lagoon, a huuuuuge swimming pool. And for the rest of the trip, the weather was purrrrfect. And I’m more tanned than ever, yayyyyy, almost like a black person!!!!

We also got to know Carla and Ashley’s British and Welsh CRAZY flatmates and we played the stupidest drinking games and got ‘pissed off our trolleys’ with them as the Welsh guy would say!!

Carla, Shanly, Ashley and Chris went skydiving the next day. I have never EVER had ANY interest in scaring myself stupid and needlessly jumping off a perfectly good aeroplane.

The journey home was long, exhausting and uncomfortable. We had to leave Airlie on Sunday evening because, again, there were no buses the next morning. We had planned to sleep at the airport but we were kicked out because apparently the airport closed for the night. So we had to take a cab back to the town and find a hotel room. And there were HUGE toads and flying cockroaches everywhere, gross!

The weather’s been good in Melbourne, +20-25 all week. Last night we went to see the circus, Cirque du soleil, it was really cool but it made me really miss dancing. And I got one of my essays back today, the one about management theories, and I got a HD+! And I thought it was a shit essay! I can only wonder how bad essays the Aussies write lol, as I was the only exchange student…

PS. The comments page is finally working!!! ---> USE IT :)