Whitehaven

Out in the wilderness... *David Attenborough voice*

I woke up at 4 am waiting for everyone to rise and shine with me. We had breakfast then all got into the tender to get to the shore of Tongue Bay. Our feet hurt as we stepped on land as the whole floor was caked with coral and stones. I tippy toed around until we hit bush. We walked a few hundred metres up to the look out, then to a second look out then walked right around to another direction to head down to the renowned beach.


Process of photo bombing

Completion of photo bombing

We expected the big man to do an almighty jump... but instead he just lifted a few centimetres off the ground haha!

Pyramid!

I wasn't expecting much at first because of the previous floor of coral and stones but then I saw the sand. It was pure white. As my foot touched the ground it felt like sifted flour. The 5km stretch of Whitehaven beach is the only beach in the world with 99.9% silica sand. With that, comes strict laws so anyone who tries to take the sand or anything with them cops a hefty fine.

I am so proud of this photo I took, just imagine the captions:
Take nothing but photos...
Leave nothing but footprints...
Whitsunday Islands
YEAH? ARE YOU FEELING A POTENTIAL ADVERTISEMENT IMAGE HERE?





We were at the northern end of Whitehaven at the hill inlet. Unfortunately we didn't get to see the swirling sands that occurs with low tide but the picturesque scenery was still breathtaking. Crystal clear azure waters, white squeaky sand and beautiful cerulean skies just made my mind bounce with amazement.

Ignore my winter tub of chubby



I should totally be on Street Fighter

Each time one of them took a photo of me before striking a karate pose, my body position was like this.. They were laughing at me because it seems like I stretch out like a cat to get optimum height!

We all got back onto the catamaran and headed to Maureen's Cove - our first dive location of the day. This was my second time for diving so I felt a little more comfortable, I enjoyed the scenery more. The corals here were fantastic, there were more to see than the first location. Afterwards, I snorkelled for the first time. I saw rabbit fish, clams, clownfish, parrotfish with moustaches - the lot!





Baywatch

I started swimming towards the boat, thinking I'd save Duncan the trouble of picking me up. But as I swam away from the reef and just saw blue, blue and nothing but darker blue - trepidation started flowing through my veins. I looked up to gather my orientation to only see an endless field of dark waters with the boat so far away that I decided to turn back and swim to the reefs again. With the colourful coral and cute little fishes, I felt happy and safer.

The other side of Whitehaven





We moved on to the next location "Blue Pearl Bay" - I was starting to get addicted to scuba diving so I went for round 3. Filipo and Carlos no longer joined the intro divers pack so it was just Christopher and I. They nicknamed this dive location as the fish tank and as I immersed into the water I understood why. Little fishes with dumbfounded faces scooted about everywhere, I could imagine them just saying "Weeeee! Weeee! Weee!"



Time for games



We sank down to the dance floor (where there were no coral but fishes dancing around us) to practise some breathing skills then headed off to the reefs. The breathing skills were eminent as we no longer could muck about with untrained movements as coral could be close to either side of us or on the floor and we wouldn't want to damage such intricacy.







We got out and it was absolutely freezing! So we stripped off our stinger suits and dived into the hot tub. We stayed there forever trying to put off the idea of getting out into cold evil wind. But the sound of nachos from the kitchen enticed us all out.







We all chilled as Duncan the Captain drove us out to the next sleeping spot. We had dinner, and chilled some more. Beers came out and then it was time to sleep.




Sea cucumber



I had a lot of sleep to catch up on so needless to say, I didn't have to count sheep.

Bombed them all hahahaha




What was I doing??

Priscilla the Maori Wrasse