I land in this small airport called Prosperine where the whole airport seems to come alive for an hour to process the incoming flight then shuts down again for the rest of the day. It's tropical, sunny, and most importantly beautiful. Airlie Beach is a gorgeous small beach town and totally feels like you're on an island even though I'm on the mainland. I check into the Airlie Beach Waterfront backpackers hostel and it's nice and clean. More importantly my two roommates Joey and Chloe a couple from England are supercool and friendly. Ironically they are also on the same catamaran cruise I am on starting tomorrow. The three of us will be sailing for three nights on the Emperor's Wings Catamaran to the Whitsunday Islands and outer Great Barrier Reef. I am so excited as I have heard amazing things about the Whitsunday's which is a chain of 76 islands off the Northeastern coast of Australia. If you've seen a postcard of an island in Australia most likely it was one of the Whitsunday's.
That night I grab dinner and drinks at this local backpacker watering hole and meet a couple of girls from Germany who are not working. Finally someone who is not working. I get great pointers from them on stuff to do when I get to Munich. We visit a couple of more bars then I head back to get up early the next day for sailing.
Chloe, Joey, and I head for the boat with small backpacks and a 24 pack of beer it's BYOB on the boat. We meet up with 15 other passengers and board this beautiful catamaran boat. Immediately it reminds me of my sailing adventures in the British Virgin Islands. I'm excited and sad at the same time. The BVIs was one of the best trips of my life. We get debriefed on the boat by a very enthusiastic chap from England his name escapes me at the moment. We get assigned our cabins and we are off for sailing. The boat makes it's way to the first Whitsunday island where we will stay the evening. The vibe is good on the boat everyone seems to be getting along great.
Now back to the boat crew, our cook is Rachel this energetic blonde from South Africa who always announces dinner with the statement, "Alright go ahead and grab your plates and get a feed!" A feed as if we were cattle? But hey maybe that's what they call it in South Africa. Chloe 2 is our fearless dive master who is a free spirit from New Zealand. Chloe has quite a family story and is resilient to say the least in terms of where she has gotten to today. She definitely inspired me on the trip to do things that make me happy.
We have a great dinner that night hang out under the stars and get to know one and another. We have people from Germany, England, France, USA, Sweden. We are definitely an international boat.
The next morning we get up early to make our way to Whitehaven beach the most beautiful beach I have ever seen. The dingy taxi's us over to the island and we make our way to the lookout point over Whitehaven beach. The view is postcard esque and it appears for the moment we have beaten the crowds. We make a quick 1 km trek down to the beach and it is even better. The sand they don't even call it sand, the silcon on the beach is 97.8% pure silcon. That's the highest concentration anywhere. When you walk on it you can hear it squeek because the sand/silicon is so smooth. It's feels like you are walking on silk and I just want to bury myself in it. We spend an hour and a half there exploring, taking funny photos, and having a downright good time. It does get more crowded and the tide starts to come in so half of the beach is now in water. We leave at just the right time and head back to the boat so we can make our sail to the outer reef of The Great Barrier Reef.
We arrive at the reef and the diving begins. We do some great dives exploring the various corral and fish life. I find Moray Eels, Travalis, Reef Fish, etc. The hightlight of the diving however will be our night dive at the Reef. They tell us that at night it's a whole different environment. At night the predators come out and the reef fish hide for their lives. Those predators are giant Travalis. And the Travalis know about us divers and they use our torch lights to help them hunt fish. You see the Travali cannot see very well in the dark so they essentially follow our flashlights and if we shine them on a reef fish the Travali will kill and eat the fish. Translation our torch lights were like giant light sabers and anywhere we shined them and there was a fish the Travali woud kill them. That meant we were also going to be hunters that night. I'm super pumped.
We get in the water dive down 18M and the show begins. We are surrounded by 10-15 Travali fish we start shining our lights and the hunting begins. It was one of the most incredible dives I have been on. I loved every minute of it. The circle of life was unfolding before our eyes. We also ran into the a giant sea turtle. The pictures below don't do it justice but I will never forget this dive.
The next morning we do two more morning dives then make our way from the outer reef back to the Whitsunday islands. As were sailing back everyone assumes their normal position on the front deck of the boat. I'm reclined out along with the French, Swedish, and Americans, and the two Germans I call them Hanz and Franz are in their usual spot in the hot tub. Hanz and Franz as I call them are two guys who are 18 traveling together. I have to mention them because I honestly do not think they once left the hot tub the entire time on the boat. If we were diving, sunbathing, sailing, drinking, Hanz and Franz were in that hot tub. They didn't dive instead preferring the safe confines of their little hot tub. When everyone went to bed they stayed up. Rumor has it funny business went down but this could not be verified.
On our way back to the Whitsunday's we are greeted by a pod of dolphins swimming with us along and in front of our boat. It's freaking awesome to watch them in their natural habitat. They were just as curious about us as we were about them. They followed us for 15 minutes and the entire boat was mezmerized. I just don't understand how the Japanese can hunt and kill these creatures. Dolphins will be my cause that I support going forward. Seeing them on this trip turned me into one of their advocates.
Our last night we have dinner and are shown our usual slides. It's really cool but each day the crew from the boat puts together a collaboration of photos from the days events. We all sit around and watch the slide show and share stories. Our last slide show on our last night would start late. Instead, we are interupted by a pod of dolphins hunting out the back of our boat. When the boat docks at night it has these lights it shines into the water. The light essentially attracts the fish which essentially attracts the dolphins that are hunting these fish. We are treated to almost an hour of dolphin hunting just meters from our boat. The dolphins would run these hunting patterns and we would see fish being killed right off our boat. In some of the hunting runs the dolphins would chase fish and squid who in turn would jump out of the water to try and get away. In fact we had a fish and a squid so scared that they jumped into our boat still alive. It was ridiculous. I wish I had more footage to share. But this was definitely one of the best nights of the trips. To see dolphins hunt so close to our boat. Wow!
The next morning we sailed back to Airlie beach and exchanged contact info and said our goodbyes. New Zealand had been winning the best country contest but after my sail of the Whitsunday's, Australia definitely caught up to New Zealand. The Emperor's Wings had an awesome boat and crew. I would recommend this to anyone in a heartbeat. I spent the remainder of my day in Airlie and that night boarded an overnight bus for Cairns. Whitsunday's rock thank you Emperor's Wings!
