1770 is the only place on the east coast where you can dive and surf. It is the end of the reef and therefore the start of the surf. I arrived here on the overnight bus at 9:30 this morning after a 9 and half hour ride from Airlie Beach. Not the most comfortable of places to sleep but at least I saved $25 on a hostel for the night.
(COOL BANANAS IN 1770)
So let's back up a bit from where I am now and fill you in on the time I spent at Airlie Beach and at the Whitsunday Islands. Airlie Beach actualy does not have a beach -- which I guess contradicts the theory that Australians name everything exactly the way they are... hmm. What Airlie does have is an inlet of sorts with really calm shallow water that at low tide is just a shelf of mud. But to make up for this there is a man-made lagoon and beach area.
Anyway, 8 days ago I left Magnetic Island to head to Airlie Beach. On the ferry ride from Magnetic to Townsville I met three American (gasp!) girls from Connecticut. Megan, had been living and working in Sydney for the past year and Erin and Catelyn, who are twins, had come out to travel with Megan two months ago. I took the bus with them and although we were staying at different hostels in Airlie I met up with them each day for some time on the "beach", dinner and some long overdue beers.
(Me, Meagan, Erin and Caitlyn)
Where Mission Beach and Magnetic Island were really nice quiet places to visit, Airlie Beach has an actual nightlife, even if the main strip consists of only 3 streets. We happened to be in Airlie for the weekend -- Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights -- and on top of this it also happened to be the start of the September school holiday. This is a holiday (for no particular reason as far as I've been able to gather) for both public schools and universities. Therefore, being that it is also spring here, the closest thing I can equate it to is spring break. It is in no way as crazy as American spring break (at least not in Airlie) but it does bring many Auustralians to the beaches and the bars. Which was awesome because it has been otherwise uncommon for me to be around Australians outside of tour guides and the people who run the CVA projects. Even many of the people who work at the hostels are travelers and not Australian.
The hostel I stayed at for the weekend in Airlie was called Airlie Waterfront and was situated in exactly that location -- waterfront. The view... from the kitchen, not from my room... was flat out perfect..
However, the room itself was still one of my favorites because... there were NO BUNKBEDS! It was a 6 bed dorm and I was there for 3 nights and in that time every bed changed owners every night except for 19 year old Andy who had been staying in the room for 2 weeks but had just gotten his diving license, a job at a restaurant and a room to rent and moved out on Saturday. He plans to stay in Airlie about 2 - 3 months and says he hates England and is never going back.
Some other roommates were two Irish brothers, one of whom is living in Sydney and gave me his business card and said to call if I were ever in trouble(?); Mikel from France who came to Australia on a year-long work and travel visa 12 years ago, found a job to sponsor him and has been here ever since; Emily from England who had just arrived in Airlie from the Snowy Mountains where she had spent the winter working at a ski resort and now that it was spring was looking for work and a room in Airlie. Alex from Norway, who told me that I was the first intelligent American he had met, to which I responded, "I don't know if that is a compliment or an insult." In any case, I needed to introduce him to some more intelligent Americans, so he and his friends joined me and the connecticut girls at beeches that night.
All these stories aside, all of us were in Airlie for the same reason -- the Whitsunday Islands. The Whitsundays are 74 small islands all intermingled with the reef. There are tons of different boats you can take out to the Whitsundays -- there are snorkeling or diving boats, there are boats that just sail and visit islands, there are party boats and there are even tall ships that fly pirate flags and look like they just sailed out of... I don't know... 1770.
On advice from Judith, (remember the German girl I camped with at Cape Trib?) I signed up for a boat called... Spank Me.
The other Whitsundays boats are called things like "Wings" or "Apollo". So having to respond "Spank Me" whenever asked what boat I was taking also results in good conversation. As people were arriving on the pier to board the boat, a german guy would ask each arrival, "Are you going to Spank Me?" At the time I thought he must know what it was that he was saying and think that he was being funny. However, just before boarding the boat he turns to me and says, "What does this word mean? Spank?"...
Spank Me was formerly a racing sailboat and won some big race that has Sydney in the name of it... hmm facts. It is now retired and instead sails around the Whitsundays taking passengers on 3 day, 3 night diving, snorkeling and obviously, sailing trips. Although Spank Me sounds like it would also qualify as a party boat, since the trip was 3 nights instead of 2 like most boats, it was also a bit more money and therefore was not appealing to the very young partier-backpacker crowd. Not to say we didn't have a good time -- just not the type of good time that involves people falling overboard.
The girls from Connecticut had chosen to do a 2 night trip on another boat and so we said our goodbyes on Monday with plans to meet up again further down the coast.
You are only allowed to bring one small soft bag plus alcohol on the boats. So I packed up my small backpack, put the rest of my stuff in storage for $5, hid some food in the back of the fridge at Airlie Waterfront, hired myself the required stinger suit (like a wetsuit but doesn't do much to keep your warm just to protect you from deadly invisible jellyfish), bought a 6 pack, and located the pier. About 15 minutes later 5 girls walked up each carrying a 30 pack, and some also with a box of goon (Australian for wine in a box). Mike from England and I, who had both choosen to bring minimal alcohol, exchanged looks of concern regarding our purchases and hurried back to the liquor store for more.
There were 26 passengers and 5 crew on Spank Me. As we boarded the boat, our shoes were taken from us and we were directly to the two giant cooler compartments on deck to store our drinks. As the 5 girls carrying 30 packs boarded the boat, the skipper commented, "You girls must be Irish." Oh and they were.
The average age of this group was older than most of the people I have met in Australia so far. There were actually 7 of us who were 27!! Hooray, I'm not so old! 27 year old Shane and Noel were Irish guys spending 2 months traveling Australia and Thailand; 25-27 year old Norita, Caroline, Norma, Kate and Dee were 5 Irish girls driving the coast in a camper van after spending 5 months working in Sydney; 32 year old Christoph was a Polish guy who had been living in Bondi beach (near Sydney) for 4 years, mostly surfing with a little contract IT work on the side, and he was traveling with his best mate Bart who had come to visit for a few weeks with his wife, Evelina, and her sister, Anna (Bart and Evelina were Polish but had been living in Dubai for the last year); 3 german girls, 24 year olds Clara, Sabrina and Ulla, and a swedish girl, 27 year old Sophie, who were all studying together at Gold Coast University; 27 year old Mike from England who had just finished up his degree in arch
etecture and was traveling for a few months in Australia, Thailand etc; Mikel from Denmark, whose story I never really got; Patrick from Germany who had a round the world ticket and had been to Machu Picchu earlier in the year; 22 year old George from England who had 8 weeks left on his round the world ticket and had been traveling in the US and Mexico earlier in the year among many other places; 20 year old Leanne, from Oregon who came to Australia with plans to stay for months but was trying to figure out how she could switch to the year visa; 19 and 20 year old Isabell and Brita from Sweden who had met in Australia earlier in the year and were now traveling together; and 27 year old Tobias from Germany who had just finished a degree in politics and was traveling and diving around Australia and Thailand, and to whom I had to explain the meaning of "spank".
The deck of Spank Me was void of anything not absolutely necessary to a racing boat. This makes sense, since in order to be fast the boat must carry very little. All this meant for us was that the only place to sit was on the floor. It was so relaxing to have such limited options as to how to spend your time for 3 whole days. You were either sitting on the floor and talking to your neighbor, laying down on the floor and sleeping, sitting on the floor and eating or drinking a beer, or in the water. Well I guess you could have been in bed or in the bathroom, but who wants to be there when you have perfect weather and perfect scenery and 30 awesome people to hang out with?
Included in with our trip, you got your first scuba dive for free. For licensed divers, this meant the first time they hopped off the boat in scuba gear. For unlicensed divers this meant a 30-minute introductory session in groups of 4 with the dive instructor. We did this on the first day and of course I got put in the first group and was chosen to be the first to jump off the boat all geared up with airtank heavier than my all my backpacking gear combined, weight belt around my waist, stinger suit, vest, mask, flippers and of course, regulator (the thing that you breath through). Taking that step off the side of the boat feeling like you are carrying so much weight that you won't even be able to stand up much longer is damn scary. What if they didn't really put the right about of air in your vest and you don't float right back up the surface? How far down will you drop with all that weight before you rise up again? But they don't leave you very much time to panic. They just sort of
set you up, tell you to look at the horizon, give you enough time to throw out a few choice vulgar words and insist you take a giant step off the boat.
Once I had surfaced, Priscilla, the deck hand, instructed me to grab onto the rope on the side of the boat slide down out of the way of the next jumper and wait for the rest of the group. Since this was only a 30 minute introduction, everything happened very fast. We each had to display to the instructor, Shawn, that we could perform 3 breathing and water clearing tasks just below the surface. In order to do this, Shawn would press a button on a tube attached to your vest that made you less bouyant and cause you to sink until your head was below the water. You could still pull yourself back out of the water if necessary but it took a great deal of effort to stay that way. I ended up having some issues with finding a mask that fit and they had to throw down 2 different masks for me to try before I found one I was happy enough with. Because of this delay and subsequent rushing through the 3 skills, I didn't feel entirely confident under the water. One other girl opted to get out of the
water because she couldn't get the hang of it, but I couldn't bear the idea of giving up after all this so I joined to the group and headed out away from the boat anyway. Shawn changed the pressure on our vests and we sunk down holding onto a rope that went about 10 meters deep. Eventually to my surprise, Shawn waved to us to let go of the rope and we swam around the (mostly dead) coral. It was definitely a unique feeling swimming like this underwater and having the option to go not only forward and back and side to side but up and down. However, there wasn't much to see that was all that interesting. The reef I saw on my Cairns snorkel trip was much nicer and much more colorful. I ended my diving day though when I managed to get water in my mouth, tried to remedy this and ended up also getting water in my mask, so I panicked a bit and swam up to the surface holding my breath. Shawn practically beat me to the surface with questions of "why did you take your regulator out of your mouth?", to which I had no response other than, "I don't really know what happened, I panicked." So anyway, I am glad that I did the intro dive, but if I were ever to dive again, I would want to do a real dive course where they start you in a pool and give you plenty of time to get comfortable with the equipment.
Another highlight of all Whitsunday's trips is the visit to White Haven beach. The sand here is like baking powder in both it's color and texture. The water is entirely clear and calm. The only way to access the beach is by boat and the only permanent man made structure on the island is a bathroom. We spent an afternoon on this beach enjoying the steady ground under our feet.
One of the perks of Spank Me was that you could participate in putting up the sails on the boat.
We had great weather right up until the early morning of the last night when the boat began to sway in a way that had many people wondering if they would fall out of bed. Once we put the sails up and began sailing back to Airlie, the boat took some pretty steep tilts, several of which had most of us holding on to keep from sliding across the deck.
I could probably go on and on about the sailing experience but this post is getting quite lengthy and I have to go get myself ready for a trip to fraser island -- where I will be spending 3 days in a 4x4 with 10 people on an island with no roads.
See more pictures by going to facebook and viewing the group "Spank Me!!"
Or go to:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=35972&l=7e35f&id=802088251
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