The Great Barrier Reef!

The venture to the reef was an experience in itself! A quick flight and an 18-hour bus ride and we were finally at Airlie Beach! The beachtown was fun and quaint but had some great harbor views and pretty much served as a port for people to get out on the WhitSunday Islands and the Great Barrier Reef!

Our ship was a sailboat with 18 passengers and 3 crew – it was an experience and a blast! We were asked to help hoist sails or pull on lines or whatever was needed. The group was a hodge podge of backpackers , Adam and I were the only Americans and then we had some Scots, Irish, Hollanders, Germans, French and Belgium. It was pretty fun to talk to everyone about what kind of work and/or travel they are doing.

We spent the days in the water, hiking an island and sailing the seas! The nights were beautiful under an incredible blanket of southern hemisphere stars and we all sat on deck drinking goon (boxed wine) and chatting about our very differnet cultures and lives!

The reef was AMAZING! I had my first scuba dive! It was so cool and I can’t wait to do it again! There were four of us doing our first dive and I must say the other three were guys and just about backed out when they had the heavy tank and all the gear on – I jumped right in and couldn’t believe how fast time under the water went! It felt like I was in an aquarium with hundreds of fish of all colors and sizes all over! There were a few fish just slightly shorter than me! The reef is such a neat array of color and texture and it was so neat to be swimming around it and seeing it from all angles. We also spent a lot of time snorkeling which is great fun too!
Besides the dolphins that occasionally swam next to our boat I didn’t see any excpetionally cool sealife (ie no sharks or turtles)But it was still neat to see ocean fish that I haven’t seen before and to see them in the reef!

The reef wraps in an out of the WhitSunday Islands, they are a chain of 74 Islands (5 are habitated). One of them has the Hayman Resort on it – a place that costs $3000 a night! The Islands are lush green and look like rolling hills with perfect sand and the most incredible bluish-turquoise water, it looks just like any pictures you’ve ever seen! It was fun to sail around all of this beauty – however, on our sail back into port we had winds of 25 knots! We were all sitting on the deck, rolling about and wearing ducky rain suits because the waves were splashing up on deck – it was pretty cool! It was quite interesting to live as sailor for a few days – the small kitchen, bathroom, all the bunkbeds rocking you to sleep!

Anyways, I’m so glad I was able to get to the reef! Right now I’m on a train headed to Kiama and to start work as an Au Pair!! I’m filled with mixed emotions about this – I’m excited to have a bedroom and place to put my things and not live out of a backpack for a bit but the town is a little farther than I thought, 2.5 hours by train – however, it has been a beautiful ride thus far. We will see, the family seems really nice and it sounds like I will have some neat experiences with them and I will be spending less money and making a few bucks so that’s good! But the beauty of backpacking is nothing is in stone and I get to decide what I want to do it! Right now my new idea is looking into getting to Pacific Asia for a bit! Everyone raves about it and it isn’t far from where I am now so we’ll see! Alright, this entry got a little long! But it had been a week :) Hope everyone is well, I miss you all so much!